Corn with Pimentón in Coconut Milk, for JFI-Coconut

This dish was inspired by a recipe I was reading for curried corn in coconut milk, and by a beautiful new can of pimentón.

Pimentón is an inexpensive seasoning that is well deserving of its growing popularity - it gives smokiness and depth to plain foods like cauliflower, potatos, and eggs; and takes dishes flavoured with cured meats into another dimension. I used bittersweet pimentón, but hot or sweet would also work. The mushrooms I, um, had in my fridge and needed to use. This took less than twenty minutes to make.

Wield a knife to make 1-2 tablespoons finely diced bacon or deli ends (I used a 3 cm piece of cured Italian sausage) and 2 tablespoons of finely diced mushrooms. Fry in a large saucepan until the mushrooms are soft and the fat has mostly rendered from the meat. You can omit the meat and just use extra mushrooms if you want. Add 1 1/2 cups of frozen corn (could use canned) and 3/4 tsp pimentón and fry together until heated through and tender. Add 3/4 cup of coconut milk, and simmer for a few minutes to blend the flavours. Taste for seasoning - the effect you are after is sweet corn and coconut balanced with smokiness and bite of pimentón - and serve to 2 with rice or bulgur.

The original curried corn recipe was in a paperback student cookbook called Students Go Vegan, by Carole Raymond. Student cookbooks are a great resource for less expensive and low effort recipes. This is my entry for JFI - Coconut, hosted this month by Ashwini at Food for Thought.