Sweetcorn and avocado with sweet chilli and lime sauce

The flavours and ingredients in this dish are particularly well suited to a summer braai or a light lunch. However, once I read the recipe I just couldn't get it out of my head and had to make this salad, despite the fact that we are in the depths of winter at the moment. 

It is another Ottolenghi masterpiece (my photo doesn't do it justice) which has you make your own sweet chilli sauce out of roasted red pepper. The flavours are amazing and while I initially thought the ginger would be too overpowering when I was making the sauce, I loved the way it came through in the final product. 

I (obviously) substituted the sugar for a natural sweetner (in this case, raw honey), scaled down the chillies so the kids could eat it and used a mix of apple cider and grape vinegar instead of rice vinegar. Apart from that I left the recipe for the sauce intact. I made this in a rush on a weeknight after my kids were in bed so I adapted the process a little to make it faster, chucking some of the ginger into the food processor instead of chopping it and also processing the garlic and chillies. I also boiled the corn instead of griddling and charring it as he suggests (although I may try that next time as I'm sure it adds an entirely new element of flavour).

Almost all the effort in this dish comes from making the sauce as the rest of the ingredients make for easy prep. Ottolenghi suggests making extra sauce and freezing some to make the salad again in future. I took his advice and quadrupled it. For this I am extremely glad as I have some stashed away to make this again in the warmer months. 

Sweetcorn and avocado with sweet chilli and lime sauce

Recipe adapted (barely) from Ottolenghi

4 corn cobs, trimmed
15g mint leaves, roughly shredded
20g coriander leaves, chopped
2 large ripe avocados, peeled, stoned and cut into 3cm pieces
5 spring onions, finely sliced on an angle
Salt

For the sweet chilli and lime sauce 

1 small red pepper
quarter cup raw honey
90ml apple cider and/or grape vinegar
2 tbsp fish sauce
half a red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
5cm piece fresh ginger
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
Finely grated zest of 1 lime, plus 2 tbsp lime juice


Heat the oven to 220C and roast the pepper on an oven tray for about 25 minutes until black all over. Remove from oven and immediately place in an airtight glass container (this makes it easy to peel once it cools). After a few minutes, peel the pepper. Discard the skin,seeds and stalk and place the flesh into a food processor. Add half the ginger, the chilli and the garlic clove and process till smooth. Chop the other half of the ginger finely.

Add honey, vinegar and fish sauce into a pot and bring to a boil, boil for about five minutes till syrupy then add the red pepper puree and chopped ginger. Take the pot off the heat and add lime zest and juice.

Boil the corn until cooked then cut the kernels off the cob. Mix them with the avocado, spring onion, mint and coriander then pour the sauce over and gently stir to coat everything. Add salt to taste.