207. Shrimp and Corn with Basil (p. 322)

There are some meals that you remember for your whole life. (Dinners at Morimoto, Prune and the White Barn Inn come to mind.) And then there are the meals that, while perfectly fine meals, are forgettable. This recipe, unfortunately, falls into the latter category.

That's the real problem with the backlog of cooked recipes that I've amassed in the last couple of months of less-than-active blogging.

By all objective measures, this is an excellent recipe. It's got only five ingredients, and there are only three steps: 1) melt butter; 2) cook corn and shrimp; and 3) stir in scallions, basil and salt and pepper. And just look at that picture! Looks pretty tasty, no? The problem is that I have absolutely no memory whatsoever of eating it. I can only assume that means it didn't make a big impression one way or the other ... not terrible, but not amazingly good either.

Date Cooked: September 12, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: I honestly don't remember

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+

185. Colombian Chicken, Corn and Potato Stew (Ajiaco) (p. 370)

I don't know what I was thinking when I decided to make this recipe on my Cape Cod vacation. Maybe it was the corn on the cob, or the avocado in the ingredient list that made me think this was a light, summery dish. Don't get me wrong, this stew is delicious. In fact, it's probably one of my favorite dishes in The Project so far. But this ain't beach food.

This is a hearty, filling stew of chicken, corn and potatoes, with a thick, rich gravy. The only way I can describe its flavor is "Thanksgiving in a Bowl." What I really liked about this recipe was that, with almost no effort (but a little bit of time - almost two hours start to finish), it turned some pretty modest ingredients - a sad-looking store-brand chicken, a few ears of corn, and a few potatoes - into a really satisfying meal.

First, I cut a whole chicken up into serving pieces and sprinkled them with salt and pepper. I browned the chicken pieces in some butter in the stew pot. I had to do it in a couple of batches so that it wouldn't crowd. For some reason, I brought my tall stock pot with me to the Cape. If I had brought my Dutch oven instead, I could have browned the chicken all at once. No problem, it just added about ten minutes to my cooking time. I transferred the chicken to a plate, and cooked some chopped white onion in the rendered chicken fat with some salt, pepper and a good amount of dried oregano. As the onion cooked, I grated some potatoes, and then added them to the pot along with the chicken, some store-bought chicken broth, and some water. I brought it to a simmer and then cooked it for a little less than a half hour. When the chicken was completely cooked, I removed it from the pot and set it aside to cool a little bit. Meanwhile, I added some Yukon Gold potatoes (that I had cubed and soaked in cold water) to the pot and cooked until they were almost tender. Then, I added three ears of corn that I had shucked and cut cross-wise into one-inch pieces, and cooked for a few minutes. Finally, I removed the skin and bones from the chicken, shredded the meat and added it to the pot.

The Book gives a list of accompaniments that can be served with this stew: cilantro, heavy cream, capers, and avocado. I'm sure that they'd all be good, but for ease of grocery shopping in a vacation rental, I chose to go with just the avocado.

As I said, I really liked this stew. Browning the chicken at the start gave the stew a nice rich "chicken-y" flavor. The oregano made the stew taste and smell wonderful. The real stroke of genius in this recipe is the addition of the grated potatoes which gave the gravy a nice thickness and body. My only complaint was the corn. It was really difficult to eat the corn pieces. First you need to fish them out of the gravy and then nibble the kernels off the too-small and too-hot pieces of corncob. I like my wife's suggestion for solving this problem: cut the kernels off the cob before cooking and add the kernels and the cobs to the pot. That way, you get the flavor from the cobs without having to deal with the difficulty of eating the corn in the finished stew. I'll try it this way the next time that I make this stew, and I will be making this stew again, often ... but when it's not so darned hot out.

Date Cooked: August 17, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A