 Good Sunday evening! I am here tonight with a short and sweet note about a simply magical corn recipe. We're coming to high season for sweet corn here in Ohio, and my kids have been gobbling it off the cob. (Kid corn is so easy: I microwave it in the husk for about 4 minutes, then shuck, split, and serve.) I love corn salad and corn risotto; I could murder a corn pudding or fresh corn in pasta any day. But last week's IRL cookbook club gave me a very special new spin and reason to seek out the sweetest corn: Fresh corn polenta.
This plain-sounding yet transcendent recipe is in chef Dan Kluger's book Chasing Flavor, my cookbook club's pick this past month. Kluger is chef at Loring Place, a lovely restaurant in New York City that is much beloved by the Kitchn team, and he is especially known for his thoughtful, interesting takes on vegetables. His 2020 cookbook is very Classic Chef, a Project Book, as some serious prep is required for many of the recipes and his liberal use of butter and salt is in places eye-popping.
As I was paging through looking for something I could manage on a Monday night I saw this Fresh Corn Polenta, which on a deeper read turned out to be actually quite simple, even on a weeknight. It goes like this: Zip all the corn kernels off a few ears of corn, then puree them in a food processor. After that you cook this pureed corn in a little oil, stirring all the while, until it thickens, like traditional polenta, into a thick and creamy porridge. However, unlike cornmeal polenta this happens fast — about 5 minutes for me. The result is an intensely silky, creamy corn you want to just spoon into your mouth. It's like the most pure and rich creamed corn you've ever had, but with no cream to get in between you and the corn.
There are no winners at cookbook club but if there were, this would have been a strong frontrunner. It was simply magical.
So this is my gift to you this week: a reason to buy corn, strip back its silk, and cut off all those sweet milky kernels. I love the "snick-snick" sound of a knife going down a corn cob, don't you? So satisfying. Do that, and make this polenta: it's incredibly simple, deeply luxurious; and if you finish it as Dan does with a topping of more pan-seared corn with a huge knob of butter and a handful of jalapeno and herbs, I think it could very reasonably be called The Corn of the Summer. (Get the full recipe here.)
Corny 'til I die,  FOLLOW FAITH
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Sunday, July 25, 2021
The magical corn recipe I just discovered
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