Every summer I try to improve on my recipe. (It’s for the perennially-forthcoming best-seller, Cooking Like A Guy™.)
I thought I had peaked at: “The easiest way to cook corn — if it’s really sweet and fresh — is not to. Just shuck and eat. No cooking at all!”
How do you improve on that? It’s delicious! And quick! Why heat things up in the summer?! (And who eats corn on the cob any time but the summer?) Why waste money on fuel of one sort or another to cook? And have a pot and utensils to clean?
Yet — without meaning to sound triumphal — I think I have just topped myself.
Minutes ago, I had shucked my ear of corn and was inches away from first chomp (I start from the right and chomp left, as if dining in Arabic or Hebrew) when . . . informed by a bolt of insight that comes rarely and from who-knows-where . . . I realized how to solve the salt problem. (Salt just bounces off raw corn and guys don’t have time to melt butter.) But wait!!!
(Do you see where I’m going here?)
I poured a little olive oil on my ear of corn, which necessarily dripped off onto the wood cutting board I was using as my plate . . . then sprinkled on some sea salt, some of which did bounce onto the cutting board but much of which stuck . . . then rolled the corn around on the salty-olive-oily cutting board (if there is anything better than salty oil, it is not yet known to man) . . . and then chomped right to left.
The extra time, effort, and expense were completely trivial — seconds and a penny or two — but oh was it good.
Enjoy the rest of your summer.
