Best of Summer: Creamed Corn

It looks like a scale model of a medieval torture device. But when the good corn comes in at the farmers markets, it's time to dig into the back of the cabinet and pull it out, all evil and gleaming.

It's a corn stripper, and I actually have two, both gifts from my mother-in-law. One had a wooden trough and was attractive but not all that practical. The one I really use looks a little mean, with its shiny metal rack and the hole in the middle with a razor-sharp blade on one side and a stubby bar on the other.

I seriously love creamed corn. Not that nasty pasty stuff from the can. In the summers, my mother made terrific creamed corn, always fresh and corny. We went through whole black-iron skillets of it. When I picture a good summer supper, it's always on the table along with a platter of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers cut up with vinegar.

The tricks to good creamed corn are really good corn -- very fresh, with plump kernels -- and a corn stripper. The stripper skims across the top of the kernels, slicing off the tender part, while the metal bar below the hole scrapes across the cut kernels and extracts the milky juice. Getting plenty of that juice is important. The natural starch in it is what thickens the creamed corn.

My mother has told me about the darkest days of the Depression, when my grandmother had seven mouths to feed that included two growing teenage boys. Sometimes she was so short on provisions, she didn't have milk to make creamed corn and had to use water. But they always had big skillets of corn.

I think of that whenever I make a skilletful. I have the luxury of milk, added in several additions. I usually start with butter, although my mother almost certainly started with a dollop of bacon grease from the can on the back of the stove. I add salt and plenty of black pepper, and a splash of milk. Never sugar, though: That's the kind of thing my mother would have sniffed at. If the corn is worth cooking, it's sweet enough.

Then I cook it slowly, stirring often so it doesn't stick. As it thickens, I'll add a little more milk, sort of like making risotto. It can take 20 minutes or so until it's creamy and cooked through.

Then it's ready to dish up and put out on the table, with sliced tomatoes and something simple like chicken breasts or pork chops. Or maybe no meat at all, just a table full of great produce surrounding a skillet of corn.

I know plenty of good corn dishes -- succotashes and hashes and chowders. And just corn on the cob with chile powder and lime has its pleasures. But when the corn stripper comes down from the back of the cabinet, it's a sign: Summer is here.

Dinner in summer

This is why it’s handy having a farmers market on a weekday uptown.

It was the end of the day last Tuesday. At home, the cupboards were bare because I’d had to miss my usual Saturday market expedition. A teenager was waiting to be rushed off to his evening appointment. I was too hot, tired and drained to have much energy left at all.

I pulled into the Atherton Mill Market, 2104 South Boulevard in SouthEnd, grabbed a couple of bags and dashed inside to see what I could find.

A handful of green and white Zephyr squash. A bag of newly dug potatoes, from thumb- to marble-sized. Haricot vertes-type green beans as skinny as embroidery thread. A bag of freshly shucked corn. A small Sugar Baby watermelon and a cantaloupe. A round loaf of roasted garlic & olive oil bread and a tub of the hot tomato oil from Duke’s Breads. A couple of packages of freshly harvested chicken wings from Red Dirt Ranch. Tomatoes, of course -- a fat red heirloom and a box of orange Sun Glos.

Rushing into the house, I found the teenager had already eaten and was on his way out. A reprieve, and dinner just for two of us, empty-nesters in training. I put the corn, squash, tomato oil and chicken wings away for later in the week and set aside the cantaloupe for breakfast.

On the counter, I spread out the tiny potatoes and green beans, the watermelon and the tomatoes. I looked them over and came up with the easiest dinner I could. First, two links of Trader Joe’s chicken sausage left over from the night before went into a skillet to brown slowly.

I scrubbed the potatoes under running water to take off the last of their dusty dirt and piled them in a skillet with just enough water to cover, a squirt of olive oil and a fat pinch of kosher salt. I put the lid on and brought it to a boil for 10 minutes. Tiny potatoes don’t take very long to cook.

While I waited, I pinched the tops off the little green beans. I put them on top of the potatoes and covered the skillet for 2 minutes longer, then took the top off and let the water boil away, letting it all finish cooking in the salty oil left behind.

While the potatoes cooked, I cut a couple of fat wedges of the roasted garlic bread, wrapped them in foil and tossed the package in the toaster oven to warm.

I sliced the fat red tomato and arranged it on a plate. I topped it with a pile of halved Sun Glos and some shredded basil from my garden, a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of coarse sea salt.

I sliced into the watermelon and found flesh that was as magenta-red as raspberry sorbet, a color so deep it almost looked fake. I cut away bite-size sweet chunks and piled them in a bowl.

Twenty minutes later, we were sitting down to plates with just a little chicken sausage, piles of green beans and potatoes, tomato salad with plenty of juice to soak up with the wedges of warm bread, and watermelon. It looked like a painting of summer and tasted like someone else’s life, someone more sophisticated, more elegant. M.F.K. Fisher, maybe, or Ruth Reichl.

Stopping to market on the way home like we’re living in Paris. I could get used to this. Next Wednesday, my colleague Andrea Weigl will bring you a story about the joys of summer vegetable plates. In the meantime, I hope you have a Fourth of July weekend full of all the fresh produce you can find.