This pasta dish might change the way you cook with corn
I can’t remember when I first learned that traditional Southern recipes for creamed corn depend not on the addition of actual cream, but on the gorgeous milky pulp that comes when you scrape the cobs (with the back of a knife or with a device made just for this purpose). But it changed the way I thought about the dish — and about sweet summer corn in general.
Because as delicious as the combination of corn and cream can be, the corn can end up getting a little overpowered; I prefer to find a minimal number of partners and cooking techniques that amplify, rather than obscure, corn’s pure flavor. That’s especially true when the corn is farm-fresh, and the flavor is as beautiful as it will ever be. Save the cream, I say, for times when the corn isn’t at its best (such as when it’s out of season and/or frozen).
In that vein, my favorite corn recipe is something I’ve been making for a few years now, usually the first week that local corn shows up in farmers markets. I based it on that Southern
technique but instead employ one of my favorite multiuse tools — a box grater — to extract the milk from some cobs and use a knife to slice whole kernels off other ones. The latter get briefly sauteed, and the former is barely heated through, all the better to showcase it. A little sharp pecorino cheese, fresh basil, salt and pepper, and it’s done: a summer sauce that nestles in the nooks and crannies of curly pasta.
I know I could easily add roasted or raw cherry tomatoes, or perhaps some walnuts, or even a dash — just a dash! — of cream. But I don’t, because the less I taste the corn, the less I like the sauce, and this is no time for something less than sublime.