Summer in a bowl

 You know it's summer when you've done both of the following things.  The first is picking a tomato off the vine and biting into it while the juice runs down your arm and drips off your elbow.  The second is having to go get the floss after dinner because you've got bits of corn from corn on the cob stuck between your teeth.  Only then are you in the full flow of summer!

Sweet corn is an ephemeral thing.  Of course you can get it only in summer, but good sweet corn is still somewhat difficult to find.  If you grow it yourself, you can quickly find out how fast raccoons and groundhogs can find it.  If you buy it from a farmer, it often isn't the best it can be.  Good old fashioned sweet corn is best cooked this way.  One - start a pot of water boiling.  Two - pick the corn and eat.  When you're dealing with sweet corn brought to market, you can't do that so you need to go by taste.  A lot of times the corn will either be super sweet but rather insipid without a lot of good corn taste.  This is the result of newer varieties of corn that have been developed to appeal to our country's infatuation with sugar.  I like my corn sweet but I also want it to taste like corn.  Or if the farmer's grown a really old fashioned variety, it sometimes isn't sweet enough.  Whenever I hit the farmer's market, I buy an ear and walk around the corner from the farmer, open that husk up and try it out.  If it's got a good corn taste and it's sweet, I go back and buy a couple of dozen of ears.  As soon as I get home, I start a pot of water boiling or fire up the grill.  Cooked corn will hold beautifully in the fridge for several days and you can actually freeze cooked corn on the cob and you'd be surprised at how fresh it tastes a few months later.  

Tonight, I wanted to make a corn chowder that focused on the corn but also had a little smokiness and body to it.  I love Sungold cherry tomatoes in this soup because they are so sweet and tropical tasting.  This is an easy soup to mess around with.  I think it would be great with basil added and grilled corn would be fantastic in it, especially if you served it with toast topped with smoked mozzarella. 

Summer in a Bowl Sweet Corn Chowder:

6 ears steamed corn on the cob

3 strips bacon (cook another strip or two if you're like me and sneak bits out while cooking)

1 large onion, diced into 1/4 inch pieces

2 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch cubes

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

10-12 SunGold or SunSugar cherry tomatoes, quartered (you can use other tomatoes, stick with the sweeter, golden kinds)

1 cup whole milk

Cut each corncob in half cross-ways and stand each half on the flat end and using a knife, cut the corn away from the cob.  I usually run the blunt end of the knife down the cob to get as much of the juices and corn out as possible.  Save all of this in a bowl and put the corncobs in a 1.5 quart pot and fill with cold water.  Bring to a boil and let boil for 2-3 minutes.  Reduce the heat and simmer while you prepare the rest of the soup.  

Cut the bacon into small pieces and cook over medium heat in a non-stick skillet.  After the bacon begins to brown a bit and some of the fat is rendered, add the potato and onion.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Cook for about seven minutes, until the onion begins to soften a bit.

Strain the water the corncobs have been cooking in into a larger saucepan.  Add the onions, bacon and potatoes to this liquid.  Bring to a boil and the reduce the heat so the soup is simmering.  Cook for about 15 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

Add tomatoes to soup and cook for two minutes.  Add milk and corn to soup and heat through.  Taste and add salt to your liking.  Serve.

This was my official One Local Summer meal for this week.  Everything except for the salt and pepper was local.  We've had a lot of local meals this week.  The blackberries and the peaches are in full swing around here and the first, really good heirloom tomatoes are getting ripe.  We've been grilling out a lot and whenever we do that, we grill extra summer squash for meals later in the week.  We made another pizza with homemade sourdough and topped it with leftover grilled zucchini, homemade mozzarella and basil from the garden.  We made an americanized version of Okonomiyaki which quickly used up a head of local cabbage and local leeks that were getting a little old. And we've made several local meals of homemade bread, tomatoes and basil from the backyard and homemade mozzarella made from local milk.  Local eating is anything but a hardship this time of year.

Comments

[Mangochild]

Check on the tomato for me this summer, and hopefully the corn will come soon - I saw a few early ears in the market last week, but it was a bit too early. This week maybe! What a good idea to combine corn with tomatoes, that's something I'd never have thought of :-)

[TNLocavore]

The corn goes so well with the Sungolds too. I'm a bit of an heirloom tomato snob but Sungold is the one hybrid tomato I grow every year - it's that good. When it gets orange, it almost has a tropical taste to it.

[Kalyn]

This sounds wonderful. Love the tomato garnish!

[TNLocavore]

Thanks Kalyn! The Sungolds are as sweet as the corn (and sometimes even sweeter) which makes this soup so good.