From Jeff Cox

Sweet, tender, creamy corn is so luscious simply boiled on the cob that it’s hard to believe it could be better. But when someone takes the time to dig a pit in the seashore sand and burn a driftwood fire in it until there’s a bed of red-hot coals, then load in wet seaweed, a few bushels of corn, lobsters, and soft-shelled clams, and top it with more seaweed and wet burlap until the corn and seafood are all roasted and steamed, right there could be your first dinner in paradise.

This staple food has come a long way since a Mexican annual grass called teosinte crossed with another wild grain (scientists don’t know which, and they don’t know precisely when, but it was probably sometime well before 6,000 BCE) and the resulting species began to sport small, ¾-inch heads studded with seeds. The first evidence of cultivation of this plant by Native Americans was discovered in the Tehuacan Valley of Puebla, Mexico, and dates to 5,500 BCE.

By the time Columbus arrived 6,992 years later, the plant had changed into its modern form—dependent for its survival on human hands to pull the seeds off the cobs and plant them individually a foot or so apart. Over that time, the Native Americans learned to boil their corn in water into which they threw wood ashes. Although they were stone age people living without modern science, they knew what was good for them. Today we know that niacin—a necessary vitamin in the human diet—is locked up and unavailable in corn, and societies that depend on corn for the bulk of their protein are liable to develop pellagra, a particularly nasty disease caused by niacin deficiency. Adding ash to cooking water, however, makes the water alkaline and converts the niacin into a form that can be assimilated by humans—a process scientists call nixtamalization. Perhaps Native Americans discovered the secret of unlocking niacin using divination, or a sixth sense, or maybe the way I discovered baby corn—by pure dumb luck.

When I was learning to grow vegetables organically, I planted my first corn crop in soil so poor I had to open up a four-inch- deep channel in the brick-hard earth with a pick. I planted the seeds a foot apart in five rows three feet apart, like the seed packet said, and pretty much forgot about the corn. Later that summer I found spindly little stalks about a foot and a half tall growing among the weeds. They had small, two-inch ears, which I dutifully harvested. I thought they looked like the baby corn that was showing up in Szechuan dishes in New York, so I tasted one—hmm, sweet and tender. So I harvested the bunch of them—got maybe two handfuls from the whole darn patch—and wokked them into a stir fry. That’s how I discovered that Chinese baby corn is just that—immature corn picked very young, and not a separate kind of corn. Later I learned that because corn grows so large so fast, it needs enormously rich soil and plenty of water to produce big, fat ears. Once I provided those conditions, I was swamped with corn.

I also learned that sweet corn is a mutation of Indian or field corn—the starchy corn that’s used mainly for cattle fodder in the United States. A mutant gene slows the conversion of sugar to starch—but only until the ear is picked. As soon as it is picked, the corn begins turning its sugar into starch. For maximum sweetness, then, you have to get the corn to the pot of boiling water immediately. (Don’t add salt to the water, it toughens the kernels’ seed coats and makes them chewy.) Corn breeders worked on this phenomenon and came up with corn that contains the so-called “sugary enhanced” gene, which produces added sugar in the kernel. We’re not talking genetic engineering here, but just regular, old-fashioned sexual reproduction and the careful selection of superior resulting strains. Genetic engineering involves opening up the DNA inside of genes and adding genetic sequences from other organisms that perform certain functions, or fail to perform them, or prevent their performance. Eventually—and I remember the day in the late 1970s when the delivery man brought a trial box of ‘How Sweet It Is’ into the office of Organic Gardening—breeders found corn with the so-called shrunken gene (sh2), which slowed the conversion of sugar to starch so completely that this Xtra Sweet corn, as it’s known, will stay sweet for two weeks after it’s picked.

I’ll say this for Xtra Sweet corn—it’s really sweet. So sweet that some people find it cloying. I’m on the edge: if it’s fresh-picked, fine. Then it’s poppy and juicy and sweet. But don’t let it sit for two weeks. It’ll still be sweet, but it will also have lost many of the goodies and enzymes that make fresh corn taste so good. Treat it like any other corn, which means eat it as soon as possible.

Corn laid out for sale should be iced down in summer heat. I remember the sweet corn vendors coming to Pennsylvania from southern New Jersey, the back of their trucks loaded with sweet corn in their husks over which ice was poured. Cold water ran in rivulets from the bottoms of their flatbeds. The corn—usually ‘Luther Hill’ or ‘Silver Queen’—was picked that morning and perfect. You could tell because the cut ends were still green or whitish green, and juicy-crisp when nicked with the thumbnail. When corn gets old, the cut ends are white and fibrous looking, and feel dry when nicked. When really old, they’re brown. Nobody ever thought of stripping the husks open to inspect each ear of corn the way people do here in California. It astounded me when I moved to this state to see shoppers standing by a mound of sweet corn in its husks, pulling down the husks from ear after ear, tossing ones they didn’t like back on the pile for later poor suckers to buy, I suppose. If I were the store manager, I’d toss these people out of the store on their ears. You can feel through the husks when an ear is full and fat and when it’s not. You can pull open just the top of maybe an ear or two and give it the fingernail test: if the kernel expresses clear juice when it’s pressed open with a thumbnail, it’s too young. If it expresses a milky fluid, it’s just right. If the kernel is dry and doughy, it’s too old. But maybe, just maybe, these people are looking for corn earworms!

Corn earworms are those fat gray grubs that chew into the kernels at the tips of the ears. If the earworms have been there for a while, they can chew their way down toward the mid-length of the ears, but that’s rare. Despite their rather grubby appearance, and the trail of frass (earworm poop) they leave in their wake, earworms are natural. If the choice is between pesticides and earworms, I’ll take earworms any day. Usually they are just in the tips of the ears and the tips can be broken or cut off easily and discarded, earworm and all (though I admit a pang of sorrow for the comfy earworm, lodged in her delicious home, having to go live in a dark garbage bag which will eventually be twist-tied up and sent to the dump).

However, the presence of earworms does not necessarily mean that the corn is organic. You can spray the heck out of corn with pesticides, but the poisons won’t reach down into the ears under the tight husks to kill the earworms. Earworms are really a sign of poor field management. If corn is grown in the same field year after year, the earworm populations will build up and up. A good organic farmer will never grow corn in the same field year after year. His or her corn will be relatively earworm free because of good management. And more nutritious, too. Tests by the University of California showed that organic corn contained 54 percent more bioflavonids, a cancer-preventing antioxidant) than the same crop grown with chemicals. The presence of earworms is a minor inconvenience, says nothing about organic versus conventional farming practices, and simply means that the farmers aren’t rotating their crops. No big deal.

If finding an earworm bums you out, think of all the things that corn gives us. Bourbon! My folks are from Kentucky, “where the corn is full of kernels and the colonels are full of corn.” But also tortillas, tamales, scrapple (a Pennsylvania Dutch pudding made of corn meal and ground waste parts of pigs that is sliced and fried in lard; if you’ve never had scrapple, count yourself lucky), corn syrup, popcorn, hominy grits, polenta, hush puppies, corn pone, corn bread, hoe cakes, johnny cakes, bannocks, spoon bread, and–hallelujah!–corn smut, a fungus that invades corn and looks like the growth of a gray and blackish-purple alien creature on the corn ear, but which is a delicacy called huitlacoche in Mexico, where it’s steamed or fried.

Corn has many culinary affinities, among them bacon, butter, cayenne, cheese, lemon, lime, onions, black pepper, and salt. In fact, it is, along with beans, a vegetable shmoo. For those too young to remember, the shmoo was an animal invented by the cartoonist Al Capp, who drew L’il Abner for many years. The shmoo gave eggs, tasted like ham, and loved to be kicked. I don’t know about kicking corn, but in every other way, it’s as versatile and delicious a vegetable and grain as we have.
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Organic Cheesy Corn Souffle Recipe

When corn is in season, I can’t get enough of it. Here its savory flavor merges beautifully with fontina cheese in a light and fluffy souffle.

2 cups organic corn kernels and cob scrapings
6 organic egg yolks
½ cup shredded fontina cheese
4 Tbl. finely chopped chives
Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
¼ tsp. cream of tartar
8 egg whites

1. Prepare two cups of corn kernels and cob scrapings (run the edge of a blade down the cobs to gather the juicy bits). Preheat oven to 425 F. Grease an oven-proof, two-quart souffle dish.

2. In a mixing bowl, blend the corn, egg yolks, shredded fontina cheese, chives, salt, and pepper.

3. In a separate bowl, add the cream of tartar to the egg whites and beat them to soft peaks. Fold the whites into the corn mixture until they’re well incorporated, pour the mixture into the souffle dish, and bake at 425 F. for 10 minutes, then turn the oven to 375 F. and bake for 30 more minutes. Serves 4.
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See also Dave’s Corn Cob Soup
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Jeff Cox is author of The Organic Cook’s Bible and The Organic Food Shopper’s Guide , and numerous other cooking, gardening, and wine books, and lives in Sonoma County, California.
Image Credit: © Chris Rokitski | Dreamstime.com
OrganicToBe.org | OrganicToGo.com
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