16 July 08 re: what's missing from Nigella

m-c:

As you know, I'm not much of a summer person except for the produce, but when it comes to produce I notice a lack in Nigella's otherwise appropriately summery roster.

mb:

Yes?

m-c:

Where's the corn?

I looked in the index under C for corn, I looked under M for maize, I looked under S for sweetcorn. No dice. How could she think of eternal summertime without any corn?

mb:

Omigosh, you're right. Where's the corn?

m-c:

Meanwhile I've been better organized this year than ever before for the arrival of corn. I started eating it a little sooner than true local corn, which probably won't show up for another week, but I can't wait that long. I have a file folder filled with corn ideas.

mb:

Tell tell.

m-c:

Of course I don't need notes to remind me to make our canonical summer corn dishes: corn on the cob (with real butter, salt, and at least a hundred different herbs and spices and combinations) polenta in chains, polenta with fresh corn kernels cooked into it corn kernels and tomato chunks heated up in butter or bacon fat or olive oil or peanut oil, also with hundreds of different herbs and spices and combinations (I've recently learned that if you spice that last mixture Cajun, you can call it maque choux.)

But this year we're going to have lots of new recipes too.

You'll recall that in February, when Ruta Kahate's 5 Spices, 50 Dishes was our cookbook of the month, I promised I'd make dish #10, Corn with Mustard Seeds, on pages 32-33, as soon as fresh corn was available.

mb:

Have you made it yet?

m-c:

Not yet, but it's early days still, and there are lots of other recipes in the file.

I dug out Diana Kennedy's Elote con Crema, fresh corn with cream, chiles, and cheese, from The Cuisines of Mexico (Harper & Row, 1972), page 271. I used to make it every year before I started living with Mark, who was, we thought then, allergic to milk protein. Luckily, that turned out to be wrong, he's merely lactose-intolerant, but somehow Elote con Crema never fell back into my repertoire.

mb:

That must be why I can't remember ever having it.

m-c:

I've been supplementing Nigella with Irene Rothschild's delightfully titled Cold Soups, Warm Salads (Dutton, 1990). She has a recipe for cold curried corn soup with red peppers, page 21, that I'm looking forward to.

As I am to Roy Finamore's Roasted Corn Guacamole (Tasty: Get Great Food on the Table Every Day, Houghton Mifflin, 2006, page 356).

mb:

Guacamole is avocado, onion, and tomato with chiles, lime juice, and salt. Where does the roasted corn come in?

m-c:

In his version you use roasted corn kernels in place of the tomatoes. I can easily imagine doing both corn and tomatoes.

Then there's Kylie Kwong's stir-fried corn with red onions and Chinese sausage (My China, Viking Studio, 2007, page 189).

But the most exotic, and therefore to me the most compelling, are two recipes for corn from Jyoti Pathak's Taste of Nepal (Hippocrene, 2007), one for dessert, a sweet fresh corn pudding (p. 337), and one for a savory corn on the cob with the rows of kernels split open and a spice mixture slathered on before roasting. The mixture consists of butter, green chiles, lemon juice, salt, fresh ginger, garlic, cayenne pepper, Szechwan pepper, and black pepper.

Sounds good, eh?

mb:

Intriguing. Let us know how it goes.

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