[Sca-cooks] Soupe du jour -- nota bene

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 20, 2005, at 10:02 PM, marilyn traber 011221 wrote:

> I think you're confusing the classic French recipe with what New World
> farming types do. I strongly suspect that you may never have had  
> truly fresh
> corn in your life- it's not something that urban folks get, since corn
> noticeably loses a considerable amount of its freshness within an  
> hour of
> picking- it's even noticeable after 15 minutes or so. Most city  
> folks are
> lucky to get corn less than a day or three old.

If I buy it in the supermarket, I'd agree. If I get it in the  
farmer's market, it's generally a day old or less, and on the  
occasions when I've grown it in the back yard (how do I make people  
understand that I don't, even now, live in a grey, airtight, concrete  
cubicle?), it was fresh.

After all, I did suspect there was a lot of added sugar in the canned  
stuff (and said so), and you seem to be confirming my suspicions as  
to why it is there.
>
> The original "recipe" that the canned stuff is attempting to  
> imitate, is
> fresh ears, the kernals immediately cut off the cobs and heated in  
> its own
> milk and eaten. Because the canned stuff is also relatively old,  
> the canners
> attempt to imitate the delectable fresh corn by adding the starch,  
> water, and
> sugar, then cooking in the canning process.

That may be. I could have sworn that I've seen some cans of creamed  
corn with actual cream (albeit miniscule amounts). I'm aware of the  
"fried corn" process (no, Stefan, not all fried corn is fried, it's  
just cooked in a frying pan), I just didn't realize that this was the  
effect the canners were going for if, as I had thought, they were  
adding non-canonical stuff.

> Fresh sweet corn is very sweet- even the not-so-sweet varieties are  
> sweeter
> than what most urban types are used to getting, because once  
> picked, the
> kernals immediately start converting the sugars to starch. Country  
> folks
> talking about boiling the water, going into the garden, picking the  
> ears, and
> stripping tham on the way back and dumping them into the boiling  
> water aren't
> kidding- the quick immersion in the hot water stops the conversion  
> process,
> and you lucky diner gets corn almost as sweet as candy.
>
> You're a chef, not a farmer, oh beloved UUY ;-) Some things just don't
> translate into the big city ;-)

You'd be surprised. We even have cattails.

A.




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04