I've noticed a few of you in the Northern Hemisphere have been saying lately how hot it is. Here in Oz we are just about in the middle of winter and in Melbourne its been particularly cold, but unfortunately with no real rain, and the mountains have no snow, so it looks like our ten year dry spell is still continuing. I'm praying for rain on my morel spots, as in the last few years they have been a bit scarce.

Anyway I can imagine that those of you enduring a hot summer would not have too much interest in recipes that celebrate cold weather. Indeed looking back on what I've been serving up lately, it is exclusively cold weather food. I don't want you to think that I'm ignoring my Northern Hemisphere readers or anything like that, so today I will give a recipe that goes great with a barbecue and is not your usual run of the mill salad.

It will also be my entry to Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging, kindly hosted by Gabriella from My Life as a Reluctant Housewife

I'm quite proud of this recipe, as it is the first ever recipe I thought up myself and have been serving it for more than twenty years. Everyone who tries it usually falls in love with it. It is based on wild rice, which went through a bit of a phase here in the eighties. What I found with wild rice is that it tends to dominate with its nutty flavour, so I teamed it with some other strong flavours and found that it went well with barbecued meat. Even though Mexicans would have been unlikely to have wild rice, as I believe it grows much further north, all the other flavours are Mexican, so it seemed natural to call it......

MEXICAN RICE SALAD

1 cup wild rice*
1 green capsicum
1 red capsicum
2 cobs corn
1 or 2 bird's eye chilies, finely chopped
1 or 2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 bunch coriander, washed and chopped, leaves & stems
6 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
salt & pepper

Put the wild rice in a pot, cover with salted water and simmer for about 40 minutes or until tender. While the rice is cooking, char the skin of the two capsicums, place in a covered bowl for 10 minutes to loosen the skin, then peel and cut into dice. Cook the corn cobs your favourite way, I simply place the unpeeled cobs in the microwave and blast them for about 5 minutes on full power. When cooked peel the husks, remove the silk and standing the cob on your cutting board, cut the kernels off. Whisk or shake the olive oil and red wine vinegar to emulsify.

When the wild rice is cooked, drain and place in a bowl while still hot. Add the diced capsicum, corn kernels, coriander, garlic, chile and dressing, then season and thoroughly mix. Cool to room temperature and serve.

* a friend of mine uses half brown and half wild rice to great effect.