Yesterday, we had a day away from home, so no working on posts as planned...It wasn't a planned trip on my part but it worked out just great for me anyway. I was busy in the kitchen when he came in and asked if I'd go along with him on an errand. I wasn't thrilled, given that I had a whole 15 minutes to put on makeup, finish my kitchen task and get a couple of phone calls made. John vacuumed and I swept floors. We had a little more time than expected, so I even had time to make my two calls, send info via internet to another person, and pick a handful of blackberries.
We ran our errand and then we went by Chase Farms Corn Stand to pick up a big bag of corn and some lovely little yellow summer squash. John took me to that little country store where a lovely senior Mennonite woman runs "Mama's Kitchen". We got a hand formed, fresh cooked, 100% beef hamburger (awesome), chips, soda, and an oatmeal pie for our lunch.
Then we drove to the car dealership to get some maintenance done on my car. Sitting and waiting for three hours or so....Not so much fun. Thank goodness I keep a Suduko book in the car for just such waits. I only wish I'd known we were going to be there so long, I'd have brought along my current read.
We didn't get home until nearly 5pm last night. Supper was no trouble at all. I had Beef Stew in the crock pot and Carrot Raisin Salad in the fridge.
This morning, I had a big bag full of corn waiting on me in the kitchen. It was pretty clear that working on that blog post was going to the bottom of the list yet again. Then I thought I'd just show you how I make Southern Style Cream Corn.
I start by topping and tailing the ears of corn. I pinch to feel where the kernels start. Then I know where to cut each ear.
After topping and tailing, I shucked the ears...
After shucking there are a few silks remaining.
I use a yellow scrubber and draw it from the top of the ear to the bottom to pull the silk away from the cob. You have to use just the right amount of pressure to do this. Too heavy and you pop the kernels and lose all that good corn milk. Too light and the silks stay on the corn. It's unlikely you'll get 100% of the fine silks off the corn ears but it's good to try to remove all you can.
Then comes the real work. Grating the raw corn off the cob. I use a box grater and the cheese slicer side. This is a messy job and it's not easy but it's far easier than using a very sharp knife as Granny and Mama used to do. When we were kids, we weren't allowed to remove the kernels or top and tail the ears. We were stuck with the job of shucking and removing silks.
You'll note I put the pot in the sink and you'll see corn splatters were pretty much everywhere. If I had a tall stock pot this would be less messy. If I didn't have such a deep dislike of heat I'd have taken the job outdoors but trying to keep away gnats and flies and sweating and working with a messy job outdoors didn't seem the best choices to me. I assure you that Granny did do this job outdoors...but then she didn't have air conditioning!
This is what I worked so hard to get. Milky cut kernels of raw corn. I put up 9 bags of this stuff today for the freezer. I've explained before how to cook it.
It goes into a skillet on top of the stove, add milk, water or cream, butter, salt and pepper and cook slowly, stirring frequently and adding more liquid for about 40 minutes. It's like cooking Risotto. The result is a creamy, fresh corn taste so evocative of summer that you can close your eyes and get a sunburn in the middle of winter just savoring it.
It was hard work to put up those ears of corn today but I know how worthwhile it will be later. I hope to get more corn over the next few weeks. I'd like to have about 2 dozen bags in the freezer.
