corn, crab, pol­i­tics and sim­ple things

Have I giv­en you my corn chow­der recipe? I think I did, but I’ll go back and check. One thing I’m going to try to learn this upcom­ing year, well two things, one is to write bet­ter, more pre­cise recipes. The oth­er is to find a way to present them on the blog that is eas­i­er to get and more appeal­ing, like maybe a hot link to a sep­a­rate page that will include a pho­to of the com­plet­ed dish. We’ll see.

In any case, this sum­mer has been about corn. I just love sweet corn, and not the scary kind that finds itself mixed in baked pota­toes in Eng­land. I’m sor­ry, that is just WRONG. No, the kind I mean is picked up from the Star­chaks’ farm stand on Main Street in South­bury, Con­necti­cut, dri­ven direct­ly home to be shucked on the back step (always throw the husks over the back fence; I love to have a fence to throw things over), then boiled for pre­cise­ly three min­utes, and raced to the table and salt­ed, and eat­en with­out hold­ers. I can eas­i­ly eat four ears, no prob­lem. How­ev­er, after an entire sum­mer of corn on the cob, my fam­i­ly was object­ing to the monot­o­ny. So in addi­tion to the corn chow­der, I came up with a recipe that takes into account the awful pos­si­bil­i­ty that some ears of corn will not live up to the billing I have just giv­en them. They will be, inex­plic­a­bly, tough. Or not juicy. Or starchy. The kind of corn that, were you to encounter it on the side of a lame plate of surf and turf at Red Lob­ster, you would sim­ply treat as the kind of aber­ra­tion it is: clear­ly there to pro­vide the illu­sion of a veg­etable but not in any way expect­ing to be actu­al­ly ingested.

So if this hap­pens, what is an unhap­py cook to do? Well, rather than slog through and eat it any­way because it’s there, and you bought it and cooked it, sim­ply say good­bye to the sor­ry ears and put them aside. Fin­ish the rest of your love­ly meal and do not dwell on the dis­ap­point­ment. There’s always anoth­er trip to Star­chaks’ tomor­row. Mean­while, save it for the next meal you pre­pare, espe­cial­ly if it’s a nice meaty one like steak, pork chops, or as last night, a roast­ed leg of lamb rubbed with a mix­ture of chopped rose­mary, gar­lic, lime juice and olive oil. While the lamb is roast­ing, here is what you do:

Scal­loped Corn, or How to Turn a Fail­ure Into a Success
(serves four easily)

6 ears cooked corn
four cloves gar­lic, chopped fine
half pint light cream
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
3 tbsps melt­ed butter
1/2 cup grat­ed pecori­no or parme­san cheese

Spray a nice casse­role dish (I used a pret­ty oval Pyrex one) with non­stick cook­ing spray. Sprin­kle the gar­lic over the bot­tom of the dish. Cut the ker­nels off the ears of corn (be sure to gath­er up the few racy ker­nels who will fly off onto the counter top) and sprin­kle them onto the gar­lic, tak­ing care to sep­a­rate the long rows should they stick togeth­er. Pour the cream over all the ker­nels even­ly, then toss the bread crumbs in the melt­ed but­ter and fluff them up. Spread even­ly over the corn and then sprin­kle the cheese over all. The casse­role can bake for the final half hour of the roast lamb, and will be ready to make the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment for a juice, gar­licky bite.

Then there’s the peren­ni­al ques­tion, what to do with a real­ly high-qual­i­ty 1‑pound can of crab­meat, the kind that comes in the refrig­er­a­tor sec­tion of the fish depart­ment? Or alter­na­tive­ly you could order it along with your lob­sters from Dave Thomas in Isles­ford, don’t think it isn’t pos­si­ble. Any­way, say you bought it intend­ing to make crab­cakes and then you got back from the Hamp­tons where you had just had crab­cakes. Well, here’s what you can make, in two seconds:

Sim­ple Crab Salad
(serves four)

1‑pound can crab­meat, refrigerated
1/4 cup red onion, chopped fine
3/4 cup mayonnaise
juice of half a lemon or lime
salt and pepper
half an avo­ca­do, sliced lengthwise
1 real­ly good heir­loom toma­to, cut in bite-sized pieces, or a hand­ful of grape toma­toes, cut in half lengthwise
pinch paprika
four slices but­tered toast

Mix the crab­meat, onion, mayo, and juide togeth­er, fold­ing gin­ger­ly so as not to break up the yum­my long pieces of crab claw. Then salt and pep­per to taste. DO NOT eat it all at this stage. Taste just a LIT­TLE. Then put on a large plate, mound­ed in the cen­ter. Sur­round with toma­to bites, and fan the avo­ca­do slices on top of the crab. Sprin­kle with papri­ka. Serve with but­tered toast.

I’m think­ing about all this sum­mer food, and all our fun this sum­mer in gen­er­al, to take my mind off Leav­ing Anx­i­ety. Yes, I who can find some­thing to be anx­ious about under all cir­cum­stances, am wor­ry­ing about leav­ing. It’s a bit stress­ful get­ting the house in order should some­one want to rent it this fall and win­ter. So we’re pack­ing away clothes, linens, etc., so as to make it count as fur­nished, but not per­son­al. Then of course there’s the ever-present unwill­ing­ness to leave the three Js behind. I can­not imag­ine how much Jane will change over the year until we get back in July. Already she can say “up above” when she could­n’t six weeks ago, and it will prob­a­bly be a mat­ter of only days before “the world so high” follows.

Also I must admit to a cer­tain don’t-wan­na-fly creep­ing back into my recon­struct­ed heart, which was doing so well about fly­ing on our way here. But even some­one not as self-cen­tered as I might be for­giv­en for a bit of anx­i­ety when my life entails mov­ing from Tar­get Num­ber One to Tar­get Num­ber Two or the reverse, depend­ing on your point of view and air­port of depar­ture. One of the fun­ni­est moments of the sum­mer, in a com­plete­ly sick way, was when Rol­lie stopped to chat after scyth­ing the mead­ow to the side of the house. It was the day when all the non­sense broke about what liq­uids you could and could­n’t take on board and how we had all just nar­row­ly avoid­ed what­ev­er dread­ful thing hap­pen­ing on the way from Lon­don to here, and gen­er­al­ly announc­ing the incip­i­ent Armaged­don. Rol­lie put some grass between his teeth and whis­tled. “When’s John expect­ed?” I sighed and said, “He’s fly­ing back from Lon­don tomor­row morn­ing.” Short silence. Then Rol­lie grunt­ed. “You HOPE.”

Well that’s just icky! I can join the thou­sands of gen­er­a­tions of par­ents before me and moan that I real­ly don’t like the world we’re bring­ing our child into. Europe has such a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the world than Amer­i­ca has, and such a sad­ly neg­a­tive view of much that is Amer­i­can. It’s so hard to know what to think, but one exam­ple of the huge iso­la­tion of the Unit­ed States these days came up when I was talk­ing to a friend at the pool about the air­port sit­u­a­tion. “It’s just going to lead to worse pro­fil­ing than we had in the past,” she wor­ried. And I men­tioned the awful case of a fam­i­ly in Lon­don whose home was bro­ken into by dozens of armed spe­cial force police offi­cers, shout­ing and order­ing peo­ple to the ground, all based on what turned out to be com­plete­ly base­less threat infor­ma­tion. The sto­ry was top news in Europe for days, as the mis­take was dis­cov­ered, the fam­i­ly’s ruined lives parad­ed in front of the news media, the police and gov­ern­ment forced to apol­o­gize. And you know what? The sto­ry nev­er broke here at all. I guess that’s a com­bi­na­tion of our lack of inter­est in sto­ries not direct­ly relat­ed to Amer­i­ca, and a reluc­tance to dwell on mis­takes. Watch­ing tele­vi­sion here is inter­est­ing: the media seem to want us all real­ly scared, but not very specif­i­cal­ly! A strange mix­ture of how right we must be because we’re Amer­i­cans, but how tar­get-num­ber-one we are because every­one else in the world thinks we’re wrong. Such an unhap­py sit­u­a­tion. It will be help­ful to get back to Lon­don and real­ize that of course we can go back and forth and the world does­n’t end.

In the mean­time, though, I’ll con­cen­trate on Avery’s lit­tle face, pressed up against her dad’s. Because you see, he DID come home.