My grandfather was a great connoisseur of sweet corn. He was an excellent cook and took
great pride in the food he prepared, particularly in the summer. He would spend hours
making sure that the German potato salad was exactly right - not too sweet, not too
vinegary, warm, but not hot, with just the right amount of bacon and onion. He
painstakingly prepared each hamburger for the grill. "The secret," he would tell us as he
fluffed the meat with a fork, "is to add just the right amount of ice water. That keeps the
center cool enough that it doesn't cook too fast while the outside is browning," and he
would trickle a little more ice water into the bowl. He found the idea of lighter fluid
shocking and insisted on using lump charcoal (never briquettes) in his old kettle-style
barbecue which he lit with newspaper.
But all this was fun to my grandfather. It was all prepared with a glint in his eye and the
hint of a smile. Not so with sweet corn. Corn was serious business. He would spend
hours driving along the back roads of Upstate New York, looking for roadside stands to
buy sweet corn from. He would drive up to each new stand and examine the person who
was running it carefully. If he got the impression that they weren't serious about their corn
- if they seemed flippant or overly familiar - he would put the car in gear and drive away
to look for a more promising stand. When he finally found a stand that met his standards, he would go through the ears of corn meticulously, hefting each one in his
hand to make sure that it felt perfect. He would eventually pick out a dozen
ears or so and pay the man (It was almost always a man; most women didn't really
understand sweet corn, in Opa's opinion.) with a charming smile, but at the
same time, with a look of steely determination that promised dire consequences if the corn
wasn't up to his high standards.
The point of all this is that fresh sweet corn is serious business. Don't be deceived by the
process of eating the corn, with all it's slippery, buttery, salty, all-over-your-face messiness.
The corn itself is something to be taken seriously.
Tom Harlow is an organic farmer in Westminster, Vermont, whose sweet corn has a
reputation as being some of the best around. He says that the type of corn
you choose is just the first step. "Freshness is the key," he explains. "The fresher your
corn is, the better. As soon as an ear of corn is picked, the sugars inside start to convert to
starch. The varieties that we grow now - the ones we call 'sugar enhanced' - have more
sugar to begin with than most of the old varieties, so it takes longer for the sugars to turn to
starch. They have a longer shelf-life." But, he points out, it's still best to eat them as soon
as possible - preferably within a few hours of being picked.
Harlow grows 3 varieties of corn - the heroically named Aladdin, Ivanhoe and Lancelot
varieties. He smiles at the names. "I didn't come up with them," he defends himself.
"They're not my names. The late season variety (the Aladdin) is the better
corn, but we plant the other two varieties to make sure we have corn all season long. I
experimented with other varieties for a few years, particularly the 'super-sweet' ones, but I
found them to be very tough. They were very sweet, but the eating quality
wasn't as good as the sugar-enhanced types which are very tender."
According to Harlow, the secret to finding the very best sweet corn is timing. "The best
corn of the season comes at the end of the summer," he says. "Generally, the longer it
takes for a variety of corn to mature, the larger the ears are and the sweeter and more
tender the kernels. You can get some very good corn in 60-65 days, but the very best corn
should take 90-95 days. You get your best corn in August." Picking out a good ear of
corn is relatively simple he says. "There shouldn't be much difference between one ear and
another. If you buy your corn from a stand, it should all be more or less of the same
ripeness. It might be more or less ripe from one day to another, but at a given time, it
should all be pretty much the same. If you have any questions, ask someone in charge."
He laughs. "Retailers go berserk when you strip open ears of corn!"
[Note to the editor - I couldn't find a way to slip this in gracefully (I know, I know - when did that
ever stop me before?), but you might want to do a sidebar on something interesting that Harlow
told me. Bees and other pollinating insects don't like corn - it has to depend on the wind to
get pollinated. The tassels are the male parts of the corn plant and release their pollen to be
blown onto other plants where it is captured by the silk, which is the female part. When
you open up an ear of corn gently, you'll find that each kernel of corn has it's own strand
of silk attached to it. -jf]
Of course, choosing a good ear of corn is only a beginning. You still have
to get the corn home, shuck it, clean away the silk and cook it. Everyone has a strongly
held belief in how sweet corn should be cooked, by the way: Do you plunge the ears into
boiling water or do you start with cold water and heat it with the corn in it? What kind of
water? - Spring water? Salted water? (I once met a man who insisted that the only way to
get a truly great ear of corn was to boil it in milk.) Others say to skip the boiling altogether
- it must be steamed. But let's suppose that you do boil it. For how long?
There are several schools of thought on this subject as well. A lot of people advocate
feeling the kernels or poking them with a fork. Others insist on a specific length of time - 4
minutes, let's say, no more, no less. Still others say that the corn isn't ready until the steam
smells like corn. (And all this ignores those heretics who bake or barbecue
their corn.)
One you get your corn to the table, there is another question. How do you get the butter
onto your ear of corn? Do you try to spread it with an knife - a method which is, at best,
clumsy? Or do you make the decision to sacrifice the entire stick of butter and have
everybody roll their corn around on it? Still others advocate spreading the butter on a slice
of bread and using that to butter the corn. (The advantage of this method is
that at the end of the meal, you are left with a slice of bread that is just dripping with
butter, salt and pepper. Your arteries harden just to think about it, I know, but there are
few things in this world as decadent, voluptuous, as a warm piece of "corn bread".)
The real controversy though, is in how you eat your corn on the cob. Almost everyone
agrees that the ear of corn should be held with the pointy end directed to the right, but all
consensus ends there. The most popular way of actually eating the corn seems to be the
"typewriter" method - starting from the left (the fat end) and chewing your way to the
opposite end, whereupon you go back to the fat end and start over again.
There is a variation on that however, one that we might call the "computer printer"
variation, where the eater gets to the end of the cob, rotates it slightly, then works his or
her way back down in the opposite direction. Other people eat in a series of concentric
circles (oddly enough, this seems to be gender-based; it is mostly women who do this.
Who knows why?) or chew a circle off of each end, then take care of the
middle.
There are dozens of other, less common methods, though nobody else seems to share my
affinity for the "modified - L", where the kernels are taken off in a series of nested "L"s
like the movement of knights in a game of chess.
