Late Corn, New Potatoes, Early Chowder

    
As it was two years ago, the corn was late. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s a little dry. It’s good, mind, but not iconic. When you go to scrape the milk from the cob after cutting off the fresh corn, there’s very little there. As I said, dry.
So the corn is not as good as I would prefer for fritters or other things where I like all that corny milkiness; I made some corn pancakes, and they were good, but not as infused as they might be. Still, the cobs boiled up into a pretty creditable corn stock, though I did cook them a little longer than usual to extract their flavor.
This week, following on the record-breaking heat that the East Coast and much of the country has experienced, has been rather cool—more like a nice June than a peak-summer July. I don’t know if it is a sign of a shift toward the end of a short summer. I did notice that the Joe Pye-Weed has appeared at the side of the road, always an omen. There was one night when I wished I had some socks. Perhaps I am just talking myself into end-of-Little-Compton-summer to ease myself out, heading as we are toward the start of another academic year. All good things. . . .
While the corn was late, the potatoes were, I think, a tad early. How I love them. I culled all the tiny ones to make cocktail potatoes (can I reiterate how much I love these and  how perfect they are with a crisp white or champagne?), and have been making lots of potato salad as well. A few extras are just enough to combine with the stock to make a chowder.
Corn Chowder

This is a simple, straightforward soup. I like my chowder thin, not thick and pasty. Serves 6.
3 oz salt pork, chopped, or 2-3 T lard or butter
1 small onion, chopped fine
3 medium red skin brand new potatoes, diced
2 T finely minced celery
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 qt corn stock (follow instructions here)
2 ears corn
1 ½ c heavy cream
1 c whole milk
1 medium-large ripe tomato, seeded and chopped

½ tea Aleppo pepper (optional)
Dozen or so Ritz crackers, ground with a rolling pin
Chopped fresh cilantro or basil for garnish
Cut the salt pork into small dice and cook over medium heat to render the fat. Turn the heat up a little and add the onion, sautéing until translucent, then add the potatoes  and cook, stirring from time to time, until they and the onions begin to brown. Add the celery and garlic, tossing for a few minutes; add additional fat if needed (lard or butter) to keep it from sticking. Season with salt and pepper.
Cut the corn from the cobs and add to the potato-onion mixture. Add the stock, cover, and bring to a boil; remove the cover and cook, skimming until clear, for about 5 minutes; the potatoes should be crisp-tender when tasted. Remove from the heat and let sit for a few minutes. Add the tomato, cream, and milk; taste for seasoning, adding the Aleppo pepper now if using. Refrigerate overnight. To serve, reheat almost to a boil; serve in soup plates, garnished with a big tablespoon or so of the Ritz crackers, which thickens the soup just a little, and fresh herbs.
                                                                             

Peas Please: Fourth of July in New England

      
The 2011 growing season seems to be shaping up nicely, with more, earlier—two good things—than expected. There have already been wonderful snap peas, so sweet and crisp-tender that I have been eating them raw more often than not; and now there are elegant, slim green beans and the paradoxically much maligned and much beloved English or garden pea. Today we will consider the pea.
I am not really sure why they are called English peas, because they are not native there and they have other common names, like garden or shell pea. But most of us just call these “peas” and everyone knows what we are talking about. Peas are high in protein and vitamin C—perhaps the reason children are always being admonished to finish them. They are eaten fresh with surprising rarity, in part because of their short season (they don’t like the heat) but mostly—given the now year-round availability of nearly everything, including other kinds of peas—because their sweet tenderness quickly turns to mealy toughness; they don’t travel well. They are like corn in this regard. As a result, only about 5% of all peas are sold fresh. Most peas are frozen (or canned), and fresh-frozen peas are one of the very few frozen items I ever buy. But if you see them fresh I recommend them, because they really are different when cooked because they can still be eaten crisp. I wouldn’t buy them fresh-shelled, which you sometimes see at good markets or farmers markets, unless you can confirm they were shelled TODAY. Otherwise, you are throwing that high price that you just paid away.
The shelling, in my opinion, is no big deal, and has its own pleasures. Holding them over a bowl, pull from the stem end and pop them open along the seam: the peas will come tumbling out with the gentlest brush of a finger. This is an excellent activity to do with a toddler as it doubles as a game and lesson in learning to count, and also in nature’s variety. How many peas inside? 5, 6, 7, 8? Today I had one pea with 10—a record. It is delightfully unpredictable, as there seems to be a rather imperfect correlation between pod size and pea count. The peas are shiny and pretty; pop one of these spherical seeds in your mouth. Apparently, the act of shelling peas is arousing as well; who knew? In the late 19th century, Harry Breaker Morant wrote in his poem A-shelling Peas:
      Old earth owns many sights to see
      That captivate and please; -
      The most bewitching sight for me
      Is Nell a-shelling peas.
This year’s peas have arrived on schedule, in time for the 4^th of July, when they have a long and venerable tradition on the New England table. One would scarcely know that nowadays by looking at the typical 4^th of July repast: burgers and dogs, lobster rolls, or ribs and pulled pork do not exactly shout “peas!” for a side dish. But of course, burgers and dogs, lobster rolls, and ribs and pulled pork did not used to be traditional in New England. Poached salmon was. And that was accompanied by boiled potatoes and English peas, and some sort of lemony sauce. Devotee of old traditions that I am, I used to make this myself every year. But frankly, I am not a huge fan of salmon, and who really wants to eat hot side dishes with cold food? For the 4^th, I like a good burger, or some grilled (or fried) scallops. And some potato salad.
So have whatever you want (it is, after all, Independence Day), but do mind your peas.
Fourth of July Potato and Pea Salad
This is more the colors of the Mexican than the American flag, but its 4^th of July credentials are true-blue. The garlicky mayonnaise sauce bears some resemblance in flavor to aioli, which you could use, but this is lighter and more subtle. And has the lemon. Serves 2-3.
1 lb small red-skin potatoes
1 cup shelled fresh English peas
½ c homemade or good-quality commercial mayonnaise such as Hellman’s®
1 tea extra-virgin olive oil
1-2 large, fresh garlic clove, peeled and smashed
2 T fresh-squeezed lemon juice (about ½ large lemon)
1/8 tea salt
7 or 8 twists of freshly ground black pepper
1 scallion, finely sliced, for garnish
Shell the peas as soon before cooking as possible. Blanch them in boiling water for about 3 minutes; do not overcook. Pour into a strainer, run cold water over, and let drain  thoroughly.
Cut the potatoes in half (quarters if large) and boil until tender; they will slide off a knife inserted in the center, but will not fall apart. Depending on the size and age of your potatoes, this could take 15-25 minutes.
While the potatoes are cooking, put the mayonnaise in a bowl and add the whole smashed garlic clove(s), salt, and pepper; stir and set aside for at least 20 minutes.
Drain the potatoes. Fish out the garlic from the mayonnaise. Add the 2 T of lemon juice; it is a lot, and you can use less if you want, but I like it for this. The mayonnaise will thin considerably. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle but still warm, slice them into the sauce, and toss gently with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula. Add the peas and toss. It will be saucy, suitable for accompanying poached or grilled fish or shellfish. Or burgers.
Let sit on the counter for 30 minutes or so before serving; to repeat my mantra: do not refrigerate. Just before serving, taste for seasoning, adding additional salt and pepper to taste, and sprinkle with the scallion and/or, if you wish, finely minced parsley or a little mint. Refrigerate any leftovers and bring to cool room temperature again before eating; the peas will have lost some of their bright green color from the acid.
                                                                           

Sweet Potatoes: They’re Not Just For Thanksgiving

As the growing season winds down along the East Coast, some crops are at their peak in other parts of the country, and are available now in the market. The sweet potato, not widely grown in New England because it likes reliable warmth, is cultivated throughout the South and right now the sweet potatoes you see in the market from down South are as close as you may get to freshly dug.

So there’s no reason to wait until Thanksgiving, and good reason not to. They’re at their best, and they have many uses beyond the sweet potato casserole that you may not even like anyway if the one you know is sicky sweet or gloppy with marshmallow. It is just such casseroles, sampled at the homes of friends when I was a child, that put me off sweet potatoes for many years. Only when I finally tried a plain, buttered, salt-and-peppered sweet potato (at my grandmother’s insistence, I recall; she used to eat them on their own for lunch) did I come to appreciate their particular natural charms of rich taste and fluffy texture.

Sweet potatoes are a member of the morning glory family, native to South and Central America; they are not related to the white potato we New Englanders know—and love—so well, nor are they related to the yam, a tuber grown only in tropical regions. Sweet potatoes are essentially the edible root of a vine. They are a really outstanding source of vitamin A and beta-carotene, and a good source of vitamin C, fiber, complex carbohydrates, and several B vitamins. Buy firm potatoes with no signs of softness at the ends, and store them in the driest part of the refrigerator; they will keep for a couple of weeks, and should probably be baked rather than boiled after they have been stored. Sweet potatoes are thin-skinned, and if you find new ones, their skins will rub or scrape off as with any other new potato. If you boil or bake with skins on and want to peel them afterward, do so while they are still very warm.

Because of their nutritional value, sweet potatoes have become more popular in recent years and are becoming relatively common in restaurants, often in the form of sweet potato fries or chips. In addition to frying them, you can bake, boil, grill/sauté, or stew them, and in general treat them as you would a potato: roasted wedges with olive oil and herbs; mashed, buttered sweets; plain boiled sweets; sautéed or hash-browned sweets. Just take care because of the high sugar content, and use slightly lower heat, including for frying or sautéing, than you would for regular potatoes.

The high moisture content and natural sweetness of sweet potatoes make them nice candidates for items you might otherwise use pumpkin for, such as sweet  potato pie, pickled sweet potato, sweet potato pancakes, sweet potato butter (the reduction of sweet potato and sugar or brown sugar and spices to a jammy consistency), or sweet potato cakes and quick breads. Because cooked sweet potatoes keep well in the refrigerator and can be very successfully frozen after cooking, it is relatively easy to pull out a leftover baked sweet potato or two, or a cup or two of leftover mashed sweets, and transform them into a dessert or, as here, a morning muffin. Just make sure that if you freeze mashed sweet potatoes for later use, you do not season them first. Baked potatoes kept in the fridge do not, of course, have to be thawed; they can be mashed on demand right in the measuring cup. The perfect tool for this is the tamper from an espresso machine.

Sweet Potato Pepita Muffins

You can make these with either boiled or baked sweet potatoes. Makes 12.

1 cup packed mashed sweet potato
½ cup maple syrup, preferably Grade B
¼ cup melted sweet butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 tea spice (nutmeg, cinnamon, clove), mixed to your preference
½ cup buttermilk

1 ¼ cup a-p flour (or substitute half whole-wheat for half the a-p)
2 tea baking soda
1 tea baking powder
pinch salt
¼ cup pepitas or nuts of your choice (optional)

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease a standard muffin tin.

In a medium bowl, stir the syrup, butter, egg, and spice into the sweet potato with a wooden spoon. Stir in the buttermilk until incorporated.

Sift the dry ingredients together, toss in the pepitas, and blend into the sweet potato mixture.

Quickly distribute the batter into the muffin cups with the spoon. Bake about 18 minutes; watch that they don’t overbrown. Serve warm with butter.

                                                                               

Potato Paradise: The Rhode Island Coast

We used to jokingly refer to my old house in Little Compton as “Chateau Potato,” pronounced with a soft ‘a’ so that it rhymed, because half the 175 acres behind it were planted with potatoes. I loved having the endless, purple- and white-flowered potato fields there—except the one year, of course, when a potato bug infestation was so severe that the striped little critters began to show up uninvited at the house after they’d exhausted the plants. Both the farm and my house have now changed hands, but the potato fields are still there, now planted and harvested by my former neighbor, Tyler Young, and sold by his wife Karla.
I stopped in at the farm yesterday and Karla said, “I’ve been wondering when you’d be by looking for those little ones,” nodding in the direction of the basket in my hand; she was right, I always picked the tiniest ones she had. The newest of the new.
Potatoes are Rhode Island’s biggest crop, grown primarily along the southeastern coast. And that’s not the only thing potato about Rhode Island. We are the birthplace and home of the perennially popular and charming toy, Mr. Potato Head. Thanks to the same fine legislature that made coffee milk our state drink, you can get a Mr. Potato Head license plate if you want.
But I digress. Good local potatoes are beginning to appear, and from now until fall they will be available here in Rhode Island. The first ones of the season, freshly dug and cooked while they are barely out of the ground, are always a kind of miracle. Their melting texture and full flavor, at once earthy and delicate, are beyond description. The best advice I have is to treat them as you would a good diamond: solitaire, without too much fussy distraction from the perfection of the thing. Boiled, of course, or fried. Or the simplest of potato salads.
A good, honest potato salad, one worthy of the new potato, is an elusive thing. Here are the rules for the potato salad my family has made for three generations: no hard-boiled egg; no celery, pickles, or other doo-dads; no “salad dressing” or sour cream or anything other than first-rate mayonnaise; no seasonings other than salt and pepper; dress while potatoes are very warm; never, ever refrigerate before serving, at room temperature. The potatoes should be what are generally called all-purpose—those that fall comfortably between waxy and mealy—with a neutral flavor that allows the texture to be the focal point; I think, for example, that Yukon Golds or other yellow potatoes have too strong a flavor. Red-skinned potatoes, except for those that are newly dug as I have here, can be too waxy and hard; go for whites from California, Washington, or Maine if you cannot find tiny local new potatoes.
Lest you think the rules are too rigid, I will just mention that everyone who has ever eaten potato salad at my house, or my mother’s, or my grandmother’s, has said it’s the best they’ve ever had. It’s one of those non-recipes that are about getting just the right taste, and to accomplish which we never measure. But here is my best shot to get you started, in the absence of being able to give you a taste.
The Family Potato Salad

The proportions here are based on 1 pound of potatoes. When you double or triple the amount of potatoes, it is probably about right to double the oil and vinegar, but add additional onion more conservatively—maybe 2 T to start for 3 pounds of potatoes. Serves 3 per pound of potatoes.

1 pound freshly dug potatoes, or the best all-purpose new white potato you can find
1/3 cup homemade mayonnaise, or Hellmann’s® Real Mayonnaise only*
2 tea corn or other vegetable oil
¾-1 tea cider vinegar
1 T finely chopped, almost minced, fresh onion
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
In a small bowl, vigorously stir the oil and vinegar into the mayonnaise to lighten it. Stir in the onion and the seasonings, starting with perhaps a scant 1/8 tea salt and 3 or 4 twists of the pepper mill.
Boil the potatoes, unpeeled and whole if they are new and small but peeled and cut up evenly if not, until they can easily be pierced with a fork but are not falling apart; this will take as little as 10 and as many as 20 minutes, depending on freshness and size. Drain, and let stand about 5 minutes, or until you can handle them. Cut into halves, quarters, or slices, depending on how you started out, and toss them into the dressing; it is crucial that you do this while the potatoes are still very warm, which results in a magical melding at the borderline of potato and dressing. Taste for seasoning; add additional vinegar, salt, pepper, or onion cautiously to achieve a balance of flavors; if the potatoes are very absorbent, you may need a bit more mayonnaise as well. Do not refrigerate! Leave on the counter, and serve at room temperature. (Of course, refrigerate left-overs, which will be very good but not as transporting the next day.)
You may be tempted to add some fresh basil, parsley, or tarragon for color or flavor. My advice is: don’t. But if you do, just don’t tell me, and please don’t do it while the potato salad is still warm: the herb will permeate and dominate the dressing, defeating the essential point of this salad.
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*Roughly west of the Rockies, Hellmann’s® is known as Best Foods®.