Corn on the noggin

The food section of our daily paper offers a wealth of information about cooking and nutrition. Each Wednesday, it offers several recipes and cooking ideas that the average person can put to use right away, provided the average person can chop 15 different vegetables while simultaneously grating Pecorino Romano cheese and making a reduction sauce and tossing an omelette with 23 different ingredients. 

Recently the food section featured corn on the cob, which is beleaguered in the Midwest this growing season due to draught, but which is apparently hale and hearty here in the East. The writer of the article quoted several local chefs who, although they offer corn on the cob in a fancy presentation in their restaurants, prefer simple preparations of the vegetable when they are at home.

One simple preparation goes something like this:

Blanch the corn in water and buttermilk and season with butter, salt, chipotle powder, chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, spice and everything nice, then put it on the grill and toss with lime juice, cilantro, and queso fresco. Finish with tabasco sauce. Then crush and place the kernels, one at a time, on a bed of freshly torn greens and yogurt.

Another chef, according to the article, also "prefers a simple preparation for corn on the cob":

Grill the corn (elevated so it is off the heat), constantly rolling it to evenly brown it. Then cut the kernels off the cob, mash them about a bit with several pats of butter and tomato and green onion and basil and leeks and wheatberries, and add some buttermilk to make a sort of mush. Then smother it in cream sherry.

My mother, too -- though not a chef -- cooked corn on the cob in a simple manner:

--Detassle the corn.

--Put the corn in boiling water until done.

--Slap on butter.

--Throw on salt.

--Put in mouth.

Occasionally, if she was feeling particularly pressed for time and needed to save a step, she would change the first step to the following:

--Convince your children that it is great fun to detassle corn.

Many current recipes for corn on the cob advise the cook to cut off the cooked kernels using a sharp knife. This, according to one expert, is "a great way to cause potential bodily harm."

My personal favorite for cooking corn on the cob is to put it right on the burner. This, we are told by a food writer in the newspaper, may sound scary, but is in actuality "no more complicated than burning your food on purpose over the burners."

At last, something TRULY simple to do.