Wednesday 26 September 2007

Corn with your cob?

I do like fresh sweetcorn. All the gardening foodies will say you should strip your cobs off the plant when the silks are brown and you can feel the kernels plump under the protection of the leaves. It's then vital to run hotfoot to the stove where your pan of water is boiling in wait. The sugars turn quickly to starch and if you store the cobs, rather than a sweet fresh taste it's all a bit floury in the mouth.
And now it's well into cob eating time - they won't last much longer in this weather - but I have a heap of corn cobs that unwrapped look like dominoes, dentures with missing teeth, censored letters or perhaps pixelated images as if faces, registration plates or other identifying/rude features have been removed.
Rather than running your mouth along the cob, nibbling like a dormouse on heat in neat lines from base to tip, it's a sort of hopscotch, leap frog or tango to follow what appears to be an entirely random pattern of kernels. Some are busting out all over, about to pop in their eagerness to burst from their buttercup yellow skins whilst others sulk in pale flatness with no growth at all, cut off in their prime. And worse, their neighbour is thrusting its stuff in the most immodest of flaunts. I actually feel sorry for them.

8 comments:

Swearing Mother said...

I love the look of that corn! It's got a sort of "to hell with what you think of me" quality about it, which I quite like!

Sweetcorn with attitude. It could catch on at Waitrose.

mountainear said...

It's been that sort of year in the garden methinks.

Anonymous said...

if picasso painted sweet corn they'd look like these - each one is a modern art masterpiece

Exmoorjane said...

LOVE sweetcorn and love your description of yours....a paeon to anarchic sweetcorn.....or as SM says, sweetcorn with attitude - love that phrase. Hmm, now feel like eating some. My neighbour grows it (grows everything, perfectly too)....wonder if he'd notice if I nabbed an ear.

Eurodog said...

Mopsa,
This is what I said to Chipendale.
"Good luck if you want to disarm an enraged pittbull or 50 kg rottweiler by pulling its front paws apart. How do you get to the front paws without being mangled?
Pittbulls you are right will not let go. How about blowing air into their nostrels? That will do it."

Penny Pincher said...

Weird - are they genetically modified? You made my mouth water. When I grew them I used to nibble on them raw as soon as I'd picked one - so sweet and flavourful. But also love them hot and buttered! must go and buy some tomorrow.

Mopsa said...

Swearing Ma - sweetcorn with attitude! Yup, that's them alright.

M'ear - I suspect it has something to do with the on again off again downpours and droughts this year.

Gastropunk - and there I was thinking the photo was a particularly poor one (in the kitchen, poor light etc).

Exmoorjane - thank you - and I suggest if he has a glut you ask your neighbour if he'd mind as they look so scrumptious - he won't be able to resist you and to be honest, they won't last many more days.

EuroD - I knew you'd have good advice for the Chip.

Lady T - no of course they aren't GM - all organic in my garden and no nasty anything if it's going to end up in my stomach. Go get a cob now.

Rob Clack said...

Oh what a shame, how disappointing. I love sweetcorn and when I can get it really fresh it's all I can do not to just eat it raw straight off the cob!