How to Grill Corn on the Cob

Someone left an Everyday with Rachael Ray magazine at the summer house we are renting down in Avalon, NJ and I found this interesting recipe I am going to try this week. Since I just wrote about Jersey sweet corn and how great it is and how many ways you can cook it, I thought a grilled corn recipe would be helpful.

Basically you are grilling the corn and adding a parmesan butter to it. You can prepare dozens of flavored butter using various herbs and ingredients. This receipe is for Parmesan butter, but you could try basil butter, rosemary or how about a combination of herbs and goat cheese.

In other words, go out and experiment with what’s growing in your own garden or create some butters using your favorite ingredients. Once you see how easy they are to make, you can make different butters for all your favorite dishes.

Grilled Corn with Parmesan Butter

Serves 8

Ingredients
1 stick of butter
½ cup parmesan cheese, freshly grated
½ teaspoon pepper
6 ears of fresh corn
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Prep the ingredients

You want the butter soft so you can leave a stick out for a while and it will soften up. I guess you could stick it into the microwave but be careful not to end up with liquid butter. You just want it soft enough to mix with the other ingredients.

Husk the corn. This recipe calls for grilling the corn husked, but I have often found it easier to grill it with the husk on. You don’t get those great grill marks on the corn but I find there is less chance of burning it this way. Choose whatever way you are more comfortable with.

Cut the corncobs in half. I like this idea because it makes the corn look a little fancier when serving, is the perfect size for kids and keeps from ending up with a bunch of half eaten ears of corn.

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Insalata Caprese is the fancy gourmet name for tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, a dish I eat all summer long as soon as the fresh local tomatoes are ready.  Now I find out the Reluctant Gourmet is preparing them all wrong.

I was first told I was making them wrong by Connie Devlin, the mother of one of my wife’s close friends, Susan Devlin. Connie, of Italian descent,  possibly makes the best meatballs I’ve ever tasted. During a weekend visit to Susan’s home in New Jersey, we were preparing Insalata Caprese for a dinner party and I suggested adding a little aged balsamic vinegar.

Connie jumped all over me and said, “No vinegar. You don’t mix tomatoes and vinegar.”

“What, no aged balsamic vinegar!”  I didn’t believe her for a minute and continued my balsamic vinegar ways and enjoying every moment.

News to Me

So here I am on vacation in the beautiful oceanside community of  Avalon, New Jersey reading a few week old food section of The Philadelphia Inquirer and lo and behold I come across an article on Insalta Caprese.

And what do you think they say about making this classic summer treat? No vinegar. I am shocked, dismayed and still disbelieving so I read further.

Insalta caprese comes from the southern Italian island of Capri and according to tradition, the salad is made up of only five ingredients: tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, olive oil and salt. No vinegar. In fact, according to the article and in support of Connie Devlin, vinegar and tomatoes don’t work together.

Why?  Because Italians like their salad tomatoes firm, slightly green and tart rather than fully ripe and sweeter the way I prefer them.  To them, there is absolutely no reason to add more tartness to the tomatoes with balsamic vineagar. Southern Italians believe the firm, tart slightly green tomatoes are the perfect complement to soft, milky texture of fresh mozzarella.

Speaking of fresh mozzarella, we are talking about the type you find sold packed in water, not the stuff you find at the grocer in shrink-wrapped plastic that is more often used for making pizza. Don’t even bother serving those rubber balls of mozzarella with fresh tomatoes and basil. Not prudent at all.

I usually buy a tub of fresh mozzarella at Costco. It saves me a lot of money but also means I always have some on hand. The shelf life is at least a couple of weeks but be sure to change the water every once in awhile. Good quality fresh mozzarella should be soft, milky and sweet in flavor. You will know when it is starting to go just by the smell. So if you do not plan to have mozzarella every other night, you may be better off purchasing it in smaller quantitites.

The olive oil should be the best extra virgin olive oil you can afford. I like the olive oil from Georgio Zampa’s farm in Sardinia that you can read about at GatewayGourmet.com, but you can find good quality extra virgin olive oil at any gourmet specialty store and now in your local supermarkets. You don’t want to overpower the other fresh ingredients with the oil so you only need a small amount.

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I grew up eating sliced cucumber salad but we called it agurke salat (a-gorka sal-at) which is the Danish name. My mother being a dane would serve it to us as a side dish or on open faced sandwiches called Smørrebrød. Just writing about these sandwiches is making my mouth water.

Here’s a photo of what the opened faced sandwiches called Smørrebrød look like. This photo below is from http://www.copenhagenet.dk/. Smørrebrød sandwiches are as much art as they are a delicacy. I remember my mor mor (mother’s mother or grandmother) taking her time to assemble a plate of these delicate sandwiches for lunch. And when I was just a kid visiting her in Denmark, we would go to Tivioli Garden where there was a shop that sold them individually. She would let me pick out my favorites and then we would go sit somewhere in the park and dine. I can’t wait to take my kids there when they get older. Some of these sandwiches used agurke salat as one of the ingredients.

When I tell friends about my Danish cucumber salad, I’m often told they know it but call it by another name native to their own ethnicity.  I’m guessing it is a popular dish to all the northern Scandinavian countries and their neighbors.

Agurke Salat

There are two important steps when preparing this cucumber salad. First, slice the cucumbers paper thin. Second, salt them to remove, as my mother would say, “the burp” from them. Other than that, the rest is easy.

I like to make a big batch at a time and eat them all week long. I even use the vinegar mixture a second time and just slice and salt some more cucumbers.

Ingredients

3 large cucumbers
Table salt
1 cup of white wine vinegar
½ cup water
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon of coriander seeds
salt & pepper, to taste

How to Make Sliced Cucumber Salad

I leave the peel on but you can peel them if you like. I find it makes them too flimsy if you cut them paper-thin. I used a food processor to slice them but you can use a mandolin or if you have a lot of patience, slice them by hand but be sure they are paper thin.

Next I lay them out on some paper towels and sprinkle them with salt. I’m not sure if it is true, but my mom says the salting helps remove whatever is in the cucumbers that make them repeat on you. Let them sit there for about 10 minutes.

After they have been salted, put them in a colander and wash all the salt off with cold water. If you don’t get most of the salt off, the final result will be way too salty. Gently squeeze the sliced cucumbers in your hands to get rid of as much water as possible. You can let them drain in the colander while you make the vinegar mixture.

Prepare the Vinegar Mixture

In a medium sized bowl that you are going to serve the cucumbers in, add the vinegar with the water, then the sugar and coriander seeds. Mix well until the sugar is dissolved.

Add the cucumbers and coriander seeds and mix together with your hands or spoon if you don’t like to get your hands dirty. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours so the cucumbers pick up all the flavor of the sugared vinegar.

This is really simple to make and goes especially well with pork.