Corn!

The nights are getting warmer and it won’t be long until summer comes! No offense, but this current season of spring has pretty much been crappy and we are now about a groundhog-hair away from being done with it. Yeah, as soon as all this pollen stops killing us, it’ll be summer time, and I know there’ll still Global Warming, but I want to have an enjoyable summer, so I’m basically not gonna think about Global Warming this summer, even when it’s 120 degrees and the pavement is soft enough to claim a shoe! Don’t wear flip-flops out on those city streets, people, please.

This summer, the one that is going to start happening any day now — don’t be fooled by the calendar — I say it’s gonna be hot because it’s summer, man, that’s why and that’s all, and besides, sweating beats freezing. Don’t think about the polar bears, except when they do those annual things in the newspaper showing the polar bear at the zoo “cooling off” and he’s so thin from not being an outdoor Polar Bear he looks like a sloppy dog going into that swimming pool for the photo-op. Endless summertime for Polar Bears, that’s all this all is.

I read this thing in one of the Magazines in my pile of pre-recycling The New York Times papers about John le Carré (not his real name), the guy who writes all these depressing spy novels, and he said you’re supposed to have a “splinter of ice” in your heart just to be a writer, and since I’m writing this mess, I am a writer, but the only ice splintered up in my heart is a Popsicle, dude, seriously, let’s have some summer! Bomb-pop style! Summer is coming! Let’s eat!

Yeah! My thoughts at the turn of each Season turn to Thoughts of Food. So now it is the Foods of Summer, if you will, but mostly toward Corn, my thoughts, which you should never boil. I am gonna roast so much corn this summer, seriously. But not on the sidewalk with eggs!

Corn goes with everything. It goes with vegetables and salad, it goes with fish, it goes with meat, it goes with hot dogs. Roasted Ear of Corn is one of those “wow factor” items, especially if you are “entertaining,” and you hit the table with a pile of roasted corns all coated with flavors (see below). “Wow exclamation point,” people will say. You watch.

So look, like I said, don’t boil the corn, man, you gotta roast it over some flames or some coals or electric grill man, it’s all good, just get some corn on the cobs, and then either pull all the corn husks off or if you want things to be more complicated and Artisanal or whatever you can carefully peel ’em, the husks, and leave attached to the bottom so you can put it all back up after you put some stuff on it. Good stuff! You can even use those frozen corns in your Grocer’s Freezer, the ones that look like they are about a third of a cob each? It almost doesn’t matter because corn basically does not taste like very much, but once you put on stuff, it doesn’t taste like anything else but corn. With stuff on it. You’ll see.

You need some kinda oil or fat, because that should go on first, so you will have something for the stuff to stick to. Butter is OK, but olive oil is probably better if you want there to be a Health aspect to this. It could even be corn oil. I know, I know, the guy who wrote the book about how the whole world is made outta corn won’t be thrilled with this maybe, but really, it could be corn oil, although flavorwise, I think you should go olive oil. Personally I go olive oil and then some butter. I know. It could even be like, in a certain situation, say you have an item in the cabinet you never use, but you don’t want it to go to waste, so it could be using up that can of spray-on pan nonstick pan coating stuff. I’m not kidding, you’re gonna cover up that corn with so much flavor, it won’t even be a thing, the base coating, and you finally used up that can, so please recycle.

OK, so you lube up your cob, and then you just go crazy mix ‘em-ups, seriously: simple stuff like salt, pepper, chili powder, paprika, oregano, cilantro, garlic powder, celery seed, grated parmesan, any kinda cheese you can get fine enough. Basically any kind of flavor dust is fair. If you have left over packs of chicken flavor from your Top Ramen, dump ’em on the corn: Flavor. Try all kinds of different versions until you get the one you like, and eat the mistakes. Squeeze some lime on there right before you eat it. It’s corn, it will never taste Bad unless you burn it to carbon-black. You can also go sweet, with sugar and cinnamon, stuff like that, honey. I mean honey is some other stuff you can put on corn, honey.

Then once you have all kinds of flavors all over your corns, you can wrap ’em back up in the husks and be all precious and tie the tops with string, or wrap de-husked corns in foil, or just do what I do and throw those bad boys right on the grill unprotected and cook ’em and turn ’em and turn ’em and cook ’em until they start changing color and looking good enough to eat. Ideally you want to get them to where the corn kernels are a little chewy, and all the stuff you used to coat the kernels is browned or caramelized or whatever. There’s a lot of water in corn so it’ll take a while, but this is the whole point of doing summer-y food processes, you now have time to enjoy a beverage, engage in idle banter, listen to music, anything but think about why it’s hot. Corn goes really good with beer.

Mr. Wrong can converse with you via many medias. Corn photo by Heather Harvey.