193. Corn Relish (p. 902) and 194. Fresh Corn Soup (p. 99)

Has 2009 been some sort of bumper crop year for corn, or what? For the last several weeks, there have been at least a dozen ears of fresh corn in my CSA box. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. It's delicious! Crisp and sweet, but, seriously, that's a lot of corn. And while plain old corn on the cob is one of the true joys of summer, I've also been taking advantage of the corn surplus by focusing on The Book's many corn recipes.

The first recipe* for Corn Relish brought me back in time. When I was a little kid, summer cookouts at my grandparents' house usually involved something called piccalilli. This sweet, tangy brightly-colored relish was always a real favorite of mine. It's been years since I've had it, but one taste of this corn relish brought me right back. Now, traditional piccalilli has cauliflower in it, but it's the seasonings in this relish ... the tumeric and dry mustard ... that are classic piccalilli flavors.

To make the relish, I started by cutting the kernels off eight ears of corn to get four cups of kernels. If you've never done it, cutting the kernels off ears of corn is really easy. First, get a great big bowl and a serrated knife. Stand the corncob on its end in the middle of the bowl, and with a sawing motion, cut the kernels off the cob. As you cut them off, they'll fall into the bowl, and if the bowl is big enough, it will catch any wayward kernels (they tend to scatter a bit as you saw them off). Next, I finely chopped some celery, white onion, and green and red bell peppers. I tried to chop the vegetables to about the same size as the corn kernels, so that everything would be of uniform size. (Excellent knife skilz practice!) The Book calls for green pepper only, but I decided to add a red bell pepper for some nice color.

I mixed the corn and chopped vegetables with some white vinegar, sugar, water, dry mustard, salt, tumeric and celery seeds. I brought it all to a boil and then reduced the heat and simmered it for about 15 minutes. I cooled the relish at room temperature and then transferred it to some plastic containers and put it in the refrigerator to chill.

This stuff is delicious. It's crunchy and sweet with a nice vinegary bite and the bold mustard and celery flavor. And the intense yellow color from the tumeric is bright and sunny. The recipe made about two quarts. The Book says that it keeps for a month in the refrigerator, but I didn't get to test that theory. My wife and I polished off a quart of the relish in about two weeks, enjoying a little bit of it as a condiment with sandwiches and salads for lunch. Another pint disappeared at our family's Labor Day cookout, and I gave the last pint to my sister-in-law. This is an easy and delicious recipe that could easily become a summer tradition.

The second recipe for Fresh Corn Soup was good, but not great. The Book calls it "pure simplicity" and says that it's "all about the corn." This is an incredibly apt description. There's really only one ingredient: corn. (Yeah, you also need water, a bit of salt and some chopped chives as a garnish.)

First I cut the kernels from a dozen ears of corn. As easy as it is to cut the kernels off corncobs, I won't lie, it took some time to do it to a dozen ears. Next, I brought the corn, six cups of water and some sea salt to a boil. Then, I reduced the heat and simmered it for about 20 minutes.

Then comes the pureeing. The Book says to do it in the blender, but I decided to use my immersion blender. It seemed a lot quicker and a lot less messy. Once it was all blended, I poured the soup through a fine-meshed sieve, pressing on the solids to get all of the liquid out.

The Book says that the soup can be served, sprinkled with chopped chives, either hot or cold. I tried it both ways, and while I liked it a lot, I didn't love it. This soup was pure corn essence. The flavor was excellent, and somehow, it was buttery and creamy even though it has not a bit of dairy in it at all. The problem I had with this soup was that it was too light. It had no substance. If I were to have a small bowl of this as a first course before a big meal, I'd be very impressed by it. But, eating this as my main lunchtime meal left me wanting more. I think that this soup could have been improved by adding some more fresh whole corn kernels at the end to give it a bit of crunch and some more heft.

(As I mentioned recently, I have a pretty big backlog of recipes that I've cooked and haven't blogged about yet. For some reason, I did't take a picture of the corn soup, and, for the life of me, I can't even remember exactly when I cooked it.)

Corn Relish
Date Cooked: August 29, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A

*The recipe for Corn Relish isn't on epicurious.com.
Fresh Corn Soup
Date Cooked: Early August, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Very Easy
Rating: B+

27. Watermelon Gazpacho (p. 89)

Recipes like this are what The Project is all about. This is the type of recipe that I might come across while flipping through a cookbook and say, "Watermelon Gazpacho?" and keep on flipping. But, since one of the goals of The Project is "to learn new things and try new foods," I gave this recipe a little more consideration. And since another one of the goals of The Project is to cook every recipe in The Book, I have to make this sometime, and with watermelons in season and cheap (44 cents a pound!) there's no time like the present.

The Book's blurb about this soup suggests that if you served it to your guests without telling them what it is, they'd never be able to guess. I didn't test this theory (My wife knew exactly what I was making, and nevertheless gamely gave it a try. Thanks, for being a good sport, Sweetie.) but I'm sure that it would work. The soup looks a lot like tomato bisque, and vaguely tastes like it, too. With the exception of the diced watermelon garnish, there's nothing fruity or sweet about this soup.

This recipe is not at all difficult, but it isn't quick either, and your blender gets quite a workout. First, you cut the flesh of a four-pound watermelon into chunks. Then you puree the chunks in the blender (reserving a cup of the flesh for the garnish) and strain the juice. The remaining ingredients (a pretty eclectic and unusual collection including whole almonds, white sandwich bread, garlic, ice cubes, and oil) are all blended with the juice to make the soup. There was way too much liquid for my blender to handle all at once, so I had to do this in batches.

The word to describe this soup is "interesting." (What a great word! Do I mean "interesting good" or "interesting bad"? The truth is that I'm not really sure, which means that this soup really and truly is "interesting.") With the exception of the garlic (more on that in a second), all of the flavors of the components of this soup disappear and meld into a completely new savory flavor that you can't quite place. There is no perceptible watermelon or almond flavor at all. The dominant flavor in this soup was garlic, which is unfortunate, but I find that's usually the case with recipes that call for raw garlic. Even when I use less garlic than called for (I used two cloves here rather than the three that The Book uses), the raw garlic simply overtakes a dish like a bully in a schoolyard. The texture of the soup is nice. It's thick and creamy (even though there's no cream). The ground almonds, however, make the soup, which is otherwise silky and smooth, a little bit grainy. The sweet and crisp diced watermelon garnish was a nice contrast in texture and flavor.

I think that this soup is meant to be eaten all at once. I had some leftover soup for lunch a couple of days later and the garlic flavor had intensified to the point of leaving a burning sensation on my tongue. (Don't get me wrong, I love garlic, but this was just too much). And even though I stirred it well before eating, the bread and almond particles had fallen irretrievably out of the suspension and there was an odd and unappetizing sludge at the bottom of the bowl.

I'm glad that I made this soup, and I enjoyed eating it, but I won't be making it again.

Date Cooked: July 20, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: C

19. Mango-Spacho (p. 90)

With the nation still in the grip of tomato terror, I've been deprived of one of my favorite summertime meals: Gazpacho. So, I was thrilled to see this tomato-free version while flipping through The Book. We ate this on Sunday, and of course, as luck would have it, the news on Monday morning reported that two of the other ingredients in this dish have been added to the salmonella watchlist: chiles and cilantro. Oh well, we somehow managed to avoid any problems despite the high-risk ingredients.

The ingredient list is long (see the photo of my mise below), but the preparation is a snap. Just throw it all in a bowl and chill.

This recipe changes up your typical gazpacho by replacing the tomatoes and tomato juice with mango and mango nectar. The other usual ingredients are all there, like cucumber, scallions and garlic, along with a couple of nice additions like fresh corn and roasted red peppers. The Book calls for half of a jalepeno and half of a serrano. But, I used the one and only serrano that Stop and Shop had in the Charred Tomatillo Guacamole. The jalepeno gave just the right amount of heat on its own, though.

The result is an excellent, refreshing summer soup. Very delicious, and I liked it a lot. The texture has a nice contrast of the silky mango and the crisp cucumber and corn. The sweetness of the mango is balanced by the acid of the citrus juice and the bite of the jalepeno. This is a sweeter soup, but it's not too fruity or at all desserty. We made this as a light dinner, but I was a little dissapointed because it just wasn't quite substantial enough. It would have been great as a first course before grilled chicken or fish, but on its own, it left me a little unsatisfied. I should have known better, though, because as Kenny Bania said in the classic Seinfeld episode, "Soup's not a meal."

Finally, if I were to make this agian, I'd probably double the recipe. As I mentioned above, there's a long list of ingredients, and the recipe only calls for a little of everything (half of a jalepeno, less than half of a can of mango nectar, a small amount of roasted red peppers). If I'm going to go through the trouble of preparing all of these ingredients, I might as well make a big batch and have some leftovers to take for luch during the week.

Date Cooked: July 5, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A-