Ten things to love: #1 Sweet Corn
The first rule of cooking as in medicine: Do no harm. The better and fresher an ingredient, the harder it is to compete with its natural state. It's tough to mess up a can of tomatoes, but you've got to shoot a little higher if you want to improve on, or even match, the taste of a sun-soaked red globe of goodness.
Corn may set this bar higher than any vegetable except, perhaps, the artichoke. My husband's grandfather, who grew corn in the backyard of his house on River Road, insisted that the water be boiling before he picked it. Anything else would take away from the corn's fresh taste.
One of these summers, I will get around to making grilled corn with cilantro and jalapeno butter or some other such thing. But fresh-picked corn is in a small group of foods that includes artichokes, lobster and clams; they arrive in this world unique and complete. To doctor them seems like messing with perfection. And there are only two things you can reliably add to perfection without screwing it up: salt and butter.
Here are couple links if you want to get ambitious with your corn. Here, here, and here. Next year, I'll try them, I promise.
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Comments
Hey Celina! Great site!
Corn is an object of worship in my family as well - I remember vividly many times as a child with my cousins, all of us staring at a burlap sack of sweet corn rather larger than myself, still warm from the field, with the instructions to "Get husking!" Leaving even a few strands of silk on the ear was simply Not Done.
Sweet corn was always boiled for four minutes (which is probably two minutes too much with the sweet hybrids these days), no salt or sugar in the water, and then buttered by sliding a small hunk of bread holding an enormous pat of butter up and down the ear. (The benefit of this system over a corn dish being that you then got to eat the "butterer") And of course the goal was to make a perfectly four or five sided cob by eating entire rows of kernels without putting the ear down. We probably resembled typewriters more than anything else. And of course, one ear was a minimum, two normal, and three not unheard of for teenaged boys and the more portly adult men.
Dan's family, not so much with the corn. They break the ears in half (!), and there is no goal for symmetrical cobs. Sometimes Dan doesn't even finish eating the whole ear, which is an egregious waste of sweet corn if you ask me. And he calls it "shucking" which drives me insane. It needs not be mentioned that the level of silk control he exerts is nonexistent - I always go over the ears he husks before I drop them in the water. [Sigh] - city folk - what're you gonna do?
- by Kate on Sep 15, 2007 at 1:46 PM | link
I love celinabean! I've just checked it out and am super impressed. Wish I had more time to explore but I'm soooooo busy at work making cider doughnuts and stocking produce. Just a quick dispatch from the epicenter of the apple harvest--we are having our Local Foods Festival tomorrow 9/16, co sponsored by the Regional Farm and Food Project. Come and visit--some of our vendors: Brown Cow Dairy, Fox Creek Farm, Woodview Sugarbush (serving maple cotton candy), Bittersweet Herb Farm, Gardnerville Farm, Bear Man Barbeque, Blue Moon, Chocolate Gecko, Honest Weight, Hudson Valley Homestead, Palatine Cheese, Queen of Tarts, Saratoga Peanut Butter, plus artisans, live bands, farm animals, horse-drawn buggy rides and pony rides. Hope to see you there!
- by Laurie Ten Eyck on Sep 15, 2007 at 2:30 PM | link
Laurie, thanks for the heads up. In a few weeks, celinabean will start two community sections. One day a week will be for people to post their food stories, pictures, ideas. The other will be a place to send event links. I'm working out the logistics. I will keep you posted (no pun intended).
BTW, the corn in the picture is from Indian Ladder.
We are going to try and make it to the festival tomorrow.
- by celina on Sep 15, 2007 at 2:51 PM | link
I loved your piece on corn!! It is one of my favorite things to eat in the whole wide world!! I can remember being a little girl and my cousin Pebbles (Meredith) and I would have contests to see who could eat all the corn off the cob first. Wow, that brought back a lot of memories.
Keep up the good work Celina!!!
Yolanda
- by yolanda on Oct 2, 2007 at 12:17 PM | link