While I love to eat corn straight off the cob, it’s not everyone’s favorite way to eat the sweet, seasonal vegetable. The cobs can be difficult to handle and you need to have toothpicks or floss available after you eat. Cutting the corn off of the cob eliminates both of these problems and still gives you the freshest corn possible. A sharp kitchen knife is the most basic tool for de-corning a cob, though it does take some practice to get a good angle for the cob and to prevent the corn from scattering everywhere as you slice it. Here is where corn strippers come into the picture, gadgets that make getting the corn off the cob a snap.
I still stick with my knife, but I love the design of this OXO Corn Stripper because it comes with a container that collects the corn as you work. Most of the products out there that do this job simply slide the corn off without depositing it anywhere in particular. The OXO stripper only holds up to 1/2-cup of corn (the amount that might come off of a small cob), so you might need to empty it if you’re stripping a big batch of cobs in preparation for making creamed corn or cornbread, but it’s still a handy kitchen tool for corn season.
Savory, unsweetened cornbread may be considered by some to be the ideal choice for sopping up chili and barbecue sauce, but I prefer my cornbread to be a little on the sweet side. Since corn is naturally sweet, I feel like a little bit of sugar or honey can really make a cornbread stand out – and neither will keep cornbread from being a good match for a spicy dish.
This cornbread gets its sweetness from a couple of different sources. Sugar is the most obvious in the list of ingredients, but only a small amount is used and more sweetness actually comes from the shredded carrots and fresh sweet corn that are mixed into the batter. Grated carrots add sweetness and moisture to the bread, just as they do for carrot cake, and don’t add a strong flavor of their own. I got the idea to use them in the cornbread when I remembered a recipe for zucchini cornbread I did quite some time ago. The zucchini version worked out perfectly and it’s nice to know that there are lots of options if you want to play around with a basic cornbread recipe.
The sweet corn, of course, accents the natural flavor of the cornmeal. Since it’s coming into season around here, I cut my corn directly off of a fresh cob and tossed it into the batter. If you don’t have access to fresh sweet corn on the cob, you can use frozen corn or even sweet canned. Just defrost or drain before incorporating it.
I think that this bread is a great summer side dish, largely because I can’t get enough corn when it’s in season. The bread goes great with grilled foods and is lovely on its own, spread with a little bit of butter or jam. as well.
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At first, “Bubby” sounds like a nickname for someone’s grandmother or great-grandmother, but perhaps to readers from NYC, the name will immediately spark thoughts of delicious, homemade pies because Bubby’s is a New York institution for pie. Bubby’s Homemade Pies is their cookbook and, while it sounds (and actually looks) like something that grandma “Bubby” might have put together, it offers more recipes for pie than several baking grandmothers could put together.
As all great pies do, the book starts out with recipes for crust. There are 15 of them, including butter and lard pastry crusts to cookie crumb crusts to savory flavored crusts. The traditional butter and lard-type crusts are all purpose pie crusts that can work with almost any filling, while the other crusts work better when paired with specific flavors. The instructions for putting together these crusts are excellent and, as a nice touch, the authors include recipes for the cookies (graham crackers, gingersnaps and chocolate wafers) that are usually used in the sweet crumb crusts so that there is no need to rely on store-bought cookies.
There are almost too many fillings to count and the pie recipes are broken down by category to make it a bit easier to sort through all of them. Just to name a few, the recipes include Fried Cherry Pies, Fig and Prosciutto Pie, Mocha Pecan Pie and Lofty Coconut Cloud Pie. This is not the kind of book that you will get through quickly because there is just so much variety! The recipes are generally short and clearly written. The only drawback is that there aren’t any photos; there are some nice illustrations, instead. It gives the book a homey, old-fashioned feel, but I still like a couple of nice food shots to inspire me to get in the kitchen.
If you’re only going to have one type of muffin in your recipe repertoire, it should be a blueberry muffin. Blueberry muffins are almost universally popular and would probably be the breakfast muffin mascot if there were such a thing. Since they’re so popular, there are lots of blueberry muffin recipes around and, while some better than others, it’s pretty easy to find a decent recipe to work with. This blueberry muffin recipe is definitely a cut [far] above a “decent” muffin and even if it doesn’t turn out to be your dream blueberry muffin, it’s definitely going to be popular with any brunch crowd.
These muffins are tender and moist, but not particularly sweet. This means that they avoid the two most common traps of muffin recipes: tasting like cupcakes or being dense and heavy. The moisture comes from the fact that they use a mixture of butter and vegetable oil in the batter. The butter adds flavor and some lightness to the texture, as it is creamed in with the sugar, but the oil retains the moisture of the muffin over time and the muffins will keep well for a couple of days as a result.
Most of the sweetness in the muffins comes from ripe blueberries and not from added sugar. One of the things that really appeals to me about this trait of the recipe is that the muffins are very good plain, but are also perfect with butter, honey, cream cheese or any other topping you might like to pair them with. I used frozen wild blueberries (small, but sweet) in my batch. The picture below gives you an idea of exactly how many blueberries were packed into each muffin. Fresh blueberries will work just as well. If you happen to have unusually large blueberries, you might want to cut back on the amount just a bit.
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