Recipe: Purist's Corn Soup

Summertime and the living is easy.

It's August - time to get sweet corn on the cob from the farm stands!

Chef Arie Pavlou, at my restaurant , makes a delicious chardonnay corn soup. He's been serving it for a few weeks now and the taste is very simple and fresh.

Chef Arie won't give out his recipes, so I need my own. First, I look in a French cookbook for ideas. No such thing as corn soup or corn chowder. "Corn" simply isn't part of the European repertoire. My German friend said that corn is fed to pigs - not humans. It's a New World food, like pumpkin, squash, and turkey,which was only introduced to Western Europe after the colonization of the Americas.

I look in another cookbook online and find Chinese-inspired corn soups, and soups that have way too many ancillary ingredients. It's difficult to find a pure, simple corn soup. They've all got cheddar cheese, cream cheese, cream, or half and half. Many have bacon and onion, and many add potatoes as a thickener. The Chinese recipes call for cornstarch and generally use chicken stock.

Some of the corn soup recipes call for lobster, crab or crawfish. Others call for broccoli, garlic, parsley, onion, zucchini, chipotle peppers, cilantro, basil, and even cinnamon! 

Chef Arie's recipe tastes pure and simple: just corn.

Here's my version for home cooking. I like just a little bit of butter and cream, and I omitted the Chardonnay.

Ingredients

• ​1 dozen ears of fresh local corn (save the husks, see below)
• ​3 cups water for boiling (save the water after boiling, see below)
• ​1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1 tbsp butter ​
• 2 tbsp heavy cream
• chopped fresh chives for garnish

Simmer the corn cobs with salt in 3 cups water, covered, for 20 minutes or until very tender. Take the corn cobs out but save the corn water.

Cut the corn kernels off the cob, by standing the cob upright then cutting downward with a knife. After cutting off the kernels, scrape the knife down the cob again to extract as much of the corn "milk" from the cobs. Save the cobs.

Put the corn husks and the cobs into the corn water and bring to a boil for several minutes. This is to extract as much corn flavor as possible into the water.

Purée the cut corn in batches in a blender until smooth. As each batch is puréed, pour through a coarse sieve, pressing on solids, into a saucepan. The sieving will eliminate most of the fibrous corn kernel skins, leaving just the tender interior of the corn kernel.

Reheat the sieved corn, stirring. Thin with some of the corn water. Add enough corn water to get the desired consistency. Add a little cream and butter.

You may not want to add any salt at all, which will let the sweetness of the corn come through.

Serve sprinkled with finely chopped chives.