Friday, July 15, 2011

Recipe: Starchy Food 1



When Perry (Robin Williams) asks Ann Napolitano (Mercedes Ruehl) "more starchy food please," she puts something vaguely yellow on his plate, and lots of it!  Could be macaroni and cheese, could even be well buttered mashed potatoes....or it could be creamed corn.  

This is my family's recipe and, although, it will keep your arms in shape with all the scraping, it's not really much a recipe at all--it's extremely easy.

While most recipes for creamed corn instruct how to marry whole kernel corn with a cream mixture, REAL creamed corn doesn't necessarily have cream in it at all (the former dish, is known as Corn and Milk here in the South).


REAL CREAMED CORN

This is best made in bulk and at the height of Green (fresh) Corn Season.  It freezes really well.

First Part:  The Scrapping

at least 6 Cobs of sweet corn
A Corn scrapper (like the one above)

Shuck the corn and rinse the cobs.  Then scrape.  I don't like doing this with less than a couple of dozen cobs, and it is hard work, but oh so worth it!  In this state it is ready for freezing.  An alternative to this is to cut the corn off the cob with a knife and then process in a food processor.  Honestly that is just too much work, the the knife will not get the essential starches out of corn.  I only use this method when I buy frozen whole kernel corn.


Second Part:  The Cooking:

Place the scraped corn into a sauce pan, bring up to a simmer.  Stir in several pats of butter, then season to taste with salt, and if you want, pepper.  You can enrich it with a little cream if you like, but it's not necessary.  Good for a least 30 minutes to release the starches. 


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