|
Now is
the best time for truckloads of corn from the farmer’s market.
Good tomatoes now too. And before you know it, it’s gone and
you have to wait until next year.
Doyle
likes to prepare it in the absolute simplest way: put the ears
in boiling water a little bit, take it out and eat it. But it’s
a versatile ingredient, there are a lot of other ways you can
prepare it.
We
came out of a heritage that said eat creamed corn out of a can
or boiled corn on the cob and that’s it. Corn now crops up in
many different recipes. Where did the idea of corn salsa come
from? You can combine corn with beans and make a salad.
Grilling corn was not popular in the U.S. as recently as 20-30
years ago, but now everyone does it. You find grilled corn on
the streets in Mexico, Greece.
Epicurious.com is a
great site for information about food and for recipes. Many of
the recipes were first published in Bon Appetit or
Gourmet magazines. Dave did a search on corn and came up
with over 1300 recipes, including soups, stews, cornbread
stuffing, etc.
GRILLED CORN
There
are two ways to grill corn. One is to keep the husk on and
soak the ears in ice water for ten minutes then cook it; the
outer husks begin to char and that steams the kernels. Or, the
other way is strip it down to the kernels and grill it, kind of
char it a little.
A
NEW METHOD FOR BOILED CORN
Boil
the corn and slather it with melted Smart Balance [a butter
substitute with good Omega-3 oils]. Sprinkle ground cumin over
it, and squirt it with a lime wedge. This is a totally
different experience, quite delicious and invigorating. A
variation would use olive oil, lime juice, and chili powder.
You could even put that on your grill to get a little
caramelization.
ROASTING EARS
A
caller from Belgium recounted a different way of grilling corn,
usually only farmers do it. “Roasting ears” makes use of
yellow dent corn, which is a field corn, not a sweet corn. The
trick is to pick it shortly after it is fertilized, when the
ears are just starting to form. These small ears are much more
tender with a different sort of taste. Open the husk, take out
the silks, put them in the oven to roast, and serve with
butter. You have to pick the corn early before it matures
before the sugar turns to starch. Farmers can count the number
of days since planting to get it at its peak; there isn’t a
large window of time when it’s good, just a day or two.
Another caller reported a similar preparation
“parched corn,” which was field corn that was cooked then
dried. It would swell up, and was sort of hollow in the center,
it was crispy like a crispy fast food snack. The kernels are
huge. Doyle adds that there’s a variety of corn you could get
in Peru with really large kernels, and you could get that
parched, they called them corn nuts. To prepare it, you have to
boil it a little bit, then roast it to get it crunchy.
BLANCHING CORN
In
general, as soon as corn is cut, the sugar wants to turn to
starch. You can stop this process by quick blanching, if you
are not yet ready to prepare it for eating. Doyle will
immediately put the corn in boiling water for 30 seconds to stop
the starchification process.
A
caller from Lexington inquired about how to blanch corn in order
to freeze it and save it for later use. Doyle would stick with
his 30-second rule: you don’t want to cook the corn, you want
to blanch it to stop the esters that want to turn the sugar to
starch. 30 seconds is plenty of time. You can cut it off the
cob, or freeze it on the cob and store each cob separately.
Then when you’re ready to eat, throw the corn into boiling water
and at that point cook it.
A
caller from Gibson City reports that for freezing corn, cut the
leftover cooked corn off the cob and put it in Ziploc freezer
bags. With fresh (uncooked) corn you want to save, blanch it
for two minutes, then plunge it in ice water, and cut it off the
cob for freezing.
GETTING THE BUTTER ON
A
caller offered this idea for getting the fat onto the cooked
corn cob. They got lazy at a family gathering and put out a
stick of butter on a plate. Instead of using a knife, they just
rest the corn cob on top of the stick of butter and rotate it.
You end up with corn indentations wearing down the stick of
butter. Doyle adds that you can use those corn-shaped handles
to help rotate the cob.
RUSSIAN SALAD WITH CORN
This
salad comes from Russia and uses all canned vegetables, four or
five kinds of beans and corn and peas. The dressing is
exceedingly unusual and extraordinarly delicious. To avoid the
legumes, Doyle makes it this way:
-
chopped green onions
-
corn cut off the cob
-
radishes thinly sliced (so they’ll soak up the dressing)
-
chopped celery (for texture)
-
zucchini squash, cut into thin slices, julienned (so pieces
are the same size as corn)
-
dry mustard (Colman’s is a little hot, but okay), a goodly
amount to make it sharp
-
malt vinegar (or cider vinegar)
-
olive oil
Make
it in advance and let it sit for a time so that the vegetables
soak up the dressing. You could add sliced potatoes.
CORN SOUP
A
caller from Champaign, a lover of soup, asked for good ideas for
soups made with corn. She makes it with milk and sautéed
onions, a can of cream corn and a can of kernel corn, and a
little thickener (flour, butter).
Doyle
recommends this no-fail traditional recipe for corn chowder:
-
bacon, chopped in 1-inch squares, fried, leave in pot
-
chopped onions, not too finely diced
-
potatoes in half-inch cubes
-
water
-
butter
-
frozen corn kernels, 2 lbs.
-
½ gallon milk
-
salt and pepper
Put
onions in the bacon pot first, sauté them just a bit, then put
the potatoes in. Add water to an inch above the potatoes. Cook
that 15-25 minutes until potatoes begin to get done but not too
soft. Just before you put the corn in, put in some butter on
top, then add the corn and milk. Heat that up, and add salt and
pepper to taste. You could dress it up with other ingredients,
but Doyle likes it just like this, a nice fresh taste. The
caller has seen a recipe that includes cheddar.
CORN AND ZUCCHINI MESS
A
caller from Downs shared her original recipe for corn off the
cob, which she calls. “Corn and Zucchini Mess” (Doyle calls it
Calabacitas).
-
3 ears of corn cut off the cob*
-
2 largish zucchini (a green and a yellow, cut into ¼-inch
cubes)
-
small red onion, chopped
-
a bit of dry vermouth for deglazing
-
2 cloves of garlic
-
bunch of green onions cut in ½-inch slices
*put a
clean kitchen towel under the ear, it on top of a half-sheet
pan. That way the cob doesn’t slip as you cut the kernels off,
and you collect all the corn. Cut the kernels rather shallow,
then take the back of the knife and run it down the ear,
scraping the milk out, into a separate container.
Put
the corn kernels only in a dry heavy skillet (cast iron works
well) and toast it until it’s tender. Season with salt and
pepper, scrape it out, there will be lots of brown crusties
remaining in the pan. Put a little vermouth in (you could use
white wine, broth, or water) to scrape up the goodies and dump
it out into the corn milk. Clean out the skillet a bit and add
some olive oil. Sauté the onions and the zucchini, season them
a little bit, and cook until the zucchini is the way you like it
only a little underdone. Add the garlic and green onions, sauté
for a minute or two, return the corn and the corn milk mixture
to the skillet and cook until the skillet is fairly dry.
What
the caller has described is very like Calabacitas, a
Southwest/Mexican vegetable recipe which is flavored with 1
finely minced serrano pepper and cumin seeds. Calabacitas are
actually zucchinis that are round, you can get them in Wyoming
and Colorado. They sometimes have them at the farmers’ market
here.
The
caller praised its versatility: it can be eaten hot or cold, as
a salad, with with cheese in quesadillas. Doyle suggests
stuffing a tomato or a pepper half with it, or a zucchini half.
CORN FOR BREAKFAST
A
caller from Urbana recalled that when sweet corn wasn’t so sweet
and didn’t hold up well, her husband’s family would use extra
corn this way: scrape the corn off the cob, put it in the
refrigerator, and the next morning have it with milk for
breakfast. She didn’t remember whether it was heated up, or
whether anything was added to it.
CORN SMUT (HUITLACOCHE)
A
caller from Champaign claimed that the parts of corn he likes
are the tassle and the silks. The tassles when they first come
out are delicious, the silk is great in soup. But he wonders
how to use corn smut. Doyle remarked that the smut has that
long involved name, “huitlacoche” (or “cuitlacoche”), in
Oklahoma they thought it ruined the crop, but in Mexico it’s a
delicacy. It’s a fungus that grows on corn. Gourmetsleuth.com
has information about it at the web site
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/huitlacoche.htm: it’s a fungus
that grows naturally on ears of corn, it’s harvested and treated
as a delicacy. The earthy and somewhat smoky fungus is used to
flavor quesadillas, tamales, soups, and other specialty dishes.
The site includes a recipe for “corn fungus tamales.” This site
also sells huitlacoche, in cans.
USING THE MICROWAVE
A
caller from Terre Haute reports that the microwave is a great
way to cook corn. Leave the shucks on, you don’t need to soak
it or anything there is plenty of water. How long? Probably 2
minutes on high, but microwaves are all different, Doyle was
thinking 4 minutes. It’s energy efficient, you don’t heat up
your kitchen, and it maintains the freshness of the corn.
|
