Dish: Corn Salad, Corn Pasta, Corn Butter, Corn Tofu, Corn Popsicles

Review:

Corn is one of my favorite foods ever!  When I see piles of corn at the farmer’s market, it’s hard not to buy a whole arm-full of corn (15 ears to be exact).  While buttery corn on the cob is always delicious, I love trying different ways to eat corn.  My favorite recipes all showcase and compliment the amazingly fresh, sweet corn so you can truly enjoy its deliciousness (and eat lots of corn).

Corn Salad – Corn salad is always a classic summer dish that never disappoints.  There are many different recipes to suit any flavor preferences.  I always like recipes that use raw corn because raw corn fully takes advantage of the gorgeously bright, crisp, sweet corn.  Using raw corn is also extra quick and easy.  There are also salads that use grilled corn which adds a deeper charred flavor.  You can find salads with avocado, tomatoes, cheese, or even peaches.  Some salads have light citrus and olive oil dressings while others have richer mayonnaise based dressings such as in esquites.  There is truly a corn salad for everyone.  I always look forward to corn salad in the summer and love trying all different variations!

Corn Pasta – Corn pasta may sound weird at first, but you must try it before you write it off.  Fresh corn has the ability to create an creamy sauce that beautifully coats pasta.  My favorite recipe is Justine Snack’s Corn and Parmesan Pasta.  This recipe uses fresh corn cut off the cob cooked with garlic, yellow onion, and black pepper and blended into a creamy sauce.  The corn cobs are used to make a corn broth to add to the sauce which amplifies the corn flavor and makes sure nothing goes to waste.  The sauce is finished by melting in fresh parmesan cheese.  This recipe creates a creamy, rich sauce that highlights the sweet corn and balances it with savory garlic and sharp black pepper.  The sauce is so velvety you would think there was actual cream in it, yet it remains light and not too indulgent.  The recipe is very quick and easy to make as well.  This is the perfect summer pasta recipe!

Corn Tofu – This is a unique way to use corn that is so incredibly delicious.  I usually don’t review recipes that can only be found in a cookbook, but this one is so delicious I had ro recommend it.  The recipe I used was from the cookbook Rintaro by Sylvan Mishima Brackett which includes many fantastic Japanese recipes.  His recipe is a corn egg tofu (or tamago tofu) that consists of eggs, corn juice, and a bit of broth whisked together and steamed to create a silken tofu-like texture.  It has the most gorgeous sweet corn flavor and a luxurious, velvety texture.  I ate it over rice with some chili crisp on top to add a kick.  This is one of my favorite recipes I’ve ever made.  It had the amazing flavor of corn I love so much and a magical texture.  It is worth buying the cookbook just for this recipe alone.

Corn Butter – I originally found a recipe for corn butter because I was planning on making butter blended with corn to melt onto bread.  Instead, I stumbled upon a recipe for corn butter made only from corn (think of it like pumpkin butter or apple butter but corn).  How do you make corn butter with only corn?  The natural starches in corn become a thickening agent when heated.  All you do is juice or blend and strain corn to get the juices, and then heat it in a pot until thickened.  This creates a smooth and velvety butter with pure, sweet corn flavor.  I did not want to waste the corn solids, so instead of juicing the corn, I simply blended it without straining.  This created a more “pulpy” corn butter that remained smooth but not as perfectly smooth as the corn butter using only juice.  I was very happy with this slightly more textured corn butter because it retained more of the integrity of the corn.   It is amazing on biscuits, brioche, vanilla ice cream, on quesadillas, or in a mozzarella grilled cheese.  It is amazing with anything that goes with corn and more!  This is the perfect way to use fresh corn if you have some ears with imperfections or mold because you can cut away the good corn and discard the rest without having to worry about having too little corn for a recipe’s measurements since the only ingredient is the corn.   I made this corn butter with my last ears of corn, and it was perfect.

Corn Popsicles – The thing that made me truly fall in love with corn was trying corn ice cream for the first time.  Before that, I always saw corn as a more savory vegetable and never appreciated how sweet it is.  Corn is so delectably sweet it can even be a dessert!  Corn ice cream is by far my favorite ice cream flavor I’ve ever had.  If you have an ice cream churner, I highly recommend you make it.  I don’t have a churner, so I made popsicles instead.  There are various recipes you can find that use a lot of milk and cream.  I am sure they are delicious, but I wanted my corn more pure.  I took some of the corn butter I made while it was still hot and added a bit of sugar, and then I froze it in a popsicle mold.  The result was a delicious sweet, refreshing, corn dessert.  It was the perfect summer treat!

Honorable Mention – Although this post is about corn recipes, on the topic of corn, I had to mention my favorite corn dish of all time.  In NYC, Quality Bistro’s corn crème brûlée is a truly unique and delicious corn dish.  If you love corn as much as me, you must try it!