Blue Cayenne

Summer!

Here is a bit of mood music to set the tone:   Joe Hisaishi’s One Summer’s Day.

How pretty is that?

This is my favorite time of the year for cooking. Summer fruits and vegetables are ripe and plentiful in the farmer’s markets. I just stand there in awe of Mother Nature’s bounty and muse on the possibilities for my kitchen.

Stone fruits. Tomatoes. Squash and beans and strawberries and kale  chard. Wow.

This Fresh Corn and Tomato Soup recipe makes great use of both ripe tomatoes and fresh white corn. The surprise in the soup (at least for me) was the use of corn meal as a thickener. Who knew? I feared that the broth would turn grainy but in the end it was smooth and flavorful.

Hope you enjoy this one. I did –to the very last drop.

Fresh Corn and Tomato Soup

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Ingredients

• 4 Corn Cobs
• 5 C. water
• 1 Large Shallot (unpeeled)
• 2 Sprigs of Fresh Oregano
• 3 T. Olive Oil
• 1 Chopped Sweet Onion
• 3 Cloves Garlic (chopped)
• 1/4 C. Cornmeal
• 2 Tomatoes (chopped)
• 2 Russet Potatoes (peeled and chopped)
• Chopped Cilantro, Chopped Fresh Tomato, grated Parmesan for garnish

Instructions

1. Prepare the fresh corn. Remove the kernels from the cobs and set the kernels aside.
2. Combine stripped corn cobs with 5 cups of water in a soup pot along with the unpeeled shallot. Add the sprigs of fresh oregano to the soup pot. Bring the water to a simmer and cook the corn broth for 15 minutes. Remove cobs and discard. Remove shallot and herbs. Set broth aside
3. Heat olive oil in a skillet and saute sweet onion and garlic in olive oil until the onion and garlic are soft. (I found that I only needed to use about 1/2 of the sweet corn kernels I got from 4 ears of corn. Depending upon the size of the corn you use, you may need to adjust the amount you put into your soup.) Stir the cornmeal into the onion/garlic mixture and continue cooking (and stirring) for an additional 5 minutes.
4. Add onion/garlic/cornmeal mixture to the broth. Add the tomatoes, potatoes and reserved corn to the broth. Cook until potatoes are tender. Season to your taste with salt and pepper.
5. Garnish with chopped cilantro, chopped tomatoes and grated Parmesan cheese.

Nutrition

Calories

629 cal

Fat

42 g

Carbs

60 g

Protein

9 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

203

https://bluecayenne.com/one-summers-day-fresh-tomato-and-corn-soup

This recipe is adapted from a Mark Bittman recipe. You can find the original recipe here.

Happy summer!

Too hot to spend much time at the stove?

These Thai Corn Fritters may be just what you need. A short cook on the griddle and you have a tasty appetizer, entree or side. (OK. I’ll fess up. I eat these for breakfast, too.)

I’ve long enjoyed simple pancakes laced with sliced jalapenos (and sometimes fresh corn) and sauced with maple syrup. This is a variation on that recipe. This recipe has no dairy and lots of sliced green onions. The onion complements the sweet fresh corn perfectly. You can eat this with maple syrup or Vietnamese sweet chili dipping sauce (nuoc cham ga). I added some cayenne pepper to my maple syrup and got the hot bite I was looking for. I love the sweet and hot flavors in this dish!

This recipe also takes advantage of the beautiful fresh corn in the markets. It’s a win win.

Here’s the recipe.

Thai Corn Fritters

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Ingredients

For The Fritters
• 2 C. fresh corn
• 2 eggs (separated and room temperature)
• Salt and freshly-ground pepper
• 1/2 C. chopped green onion
• 1 t. chopped fresh jalapeno (or to taste)
• 1 T. soy sauce
• 1/4 C. all-purpose flour
• 3-4 T. butter or neutral oil (grapeseed or corn)
Sauce
• Maple Syrup
• Cayenne Pepper (to taste)
• or Sweet Dipping Sauce (Nuoc Cham Ga)

Instructions

1. Combine egg yolks, a generous pinch of salt, 1/2 t. pepper, green onions, chile, corn, soy sauce and flour in a large bowl. Mix. Set aside.
2. Whip room-temperature egg whites until they are stiff. Fold them into the corn batter.
3. Melt butter (or heat oil) on a griddle. Spoon scoops of batter on to your griddle and cook for 3-4 minutes on each side.
4. Serve with maple syrup--heated up with cayenne pepper or sweet dipping sauce.

Nutrition

Calories

6062 cal

Fat

653 g

Carbs

44 g

Protein

20 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

200

https://bluecayenne.com/thai-style-corn-fritters

This recipe is adapted from Mark Bittman’s Corn Pancakes, Thai Style recipe in his book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. You can buy the book here.

Oh, how I wish I had a vegetable garden! I would try my hand at growing everything.

Gene, my good friend and neighbor, has a flourishing vegetable garden this year. On occasion, he lets me come down and dig around to get my fix. Along with tomatoes, zucchini and beets, he has beautiful bush beans and a few days ago I was lucky enough to get some of his first beans.

What a treat!

I’m far from alone in enjoying green beans. Green beans are the most popular edible pod bean in the United States.

Green beans originated in South America–probably Peru– thousands of years ago and their cultivation was spread to other parts of South America and northward by migrating Indian tribes. When the Europeans arrived in the Americas, green beans became part of the great Columbian Exchange. (You remember the Columbian Exchange from your history classes. America got, among other things, coffee beans, bananas, olives and onions. Europe, Asia and Africa got potatoes, tomatoes, vanilla and beans.)

In the European part of that exchange, the cultivation of the beans quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean region with the new crop becoming particularly popular in Greece, Turkey and Italy. Here is a 1543 European woodcut of a man ravenously-consuming green beans from the Americas–either that or he is shouting at the beans. Can’t tell.

So, this recipe, with its feta and mint, is a tip of the hat to that early Mediterranean love affair with the bean.

But first, a bit of food chemistry… This month, in their July-August issue, Cooks Illustrated Magazine ran a piece about cooking green beans. (They also featured the original version of this recipe.) Their article drew upon the writings of food expert Harold McGee (On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of The Kitchen). Seems that the magic in cooking tender vibrantly-green green beans is cooking them quickly in very salty water. Accoding to Cooks Illustrated (quoting McGee), “when vegetables are cooked in salted water, sodium ions displace some of the calcium ions in their cell walls…causing the vegetable to soften.”

Gene’s Beans: Green Bean Salad With Cherry Tomatoes and Feta

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Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds green beans (trimmed and cut into 1 to 2 inch lengths)
• 1/4 C. table salt (plus 1/4 t. for salad dressing)
• 12 ounces cherry tomatoes (halved)
• 1/4 C. extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 T. chopped fresh mint
• 2 T. chopped fresh parsley
• 1 T. lemon juice
• 1/4 t. pepper
• 2 ounces feta cheese (crumbled) or more to your taste

Instructions

1. Boil 2 quarts of water in a large pan. Add green beans and 1/4 C. salt to the boiling water. Cook until green beans are a bright green color and are tender. This will take 5-8 minutes.
2. When beans are tender, drain and immediately put into an ice bath until the beans are cool. When beans are cool, spin in a salad spinner until the beans are dry.
3. Combine tomatoes, oil, mint, parsley, lemon juice, pepper and salt in a large bowl. Add the green beans and toss to combine. Let the beans sit on your counter for a while to allow them to absorb the flavors of the other ingredients.
4. Plate on a pretty platter and sprinkle with feta.

7.8.1.2

197

https://bluecayenne.com/genes-beans-green-bean-salad-with-cherry-tomatoes-and-feta

This recipe is adapted from one that appears in Cook’s Illustrated Magazine. Here is the link: Green Bean Salad With Cherry Tomatoes and Feta.