You call it fresh corn buzz-kill, biologists call it peroxidase and catalase

No matter what you call it, be sure to refrigerate, cook or blanch and freeze your cobs allowing the least amount of time to pass following picking. If you don't, enzymes in the corn will eat it for lunch.

Corny Story
Once corn leaves it's stalk, nothing good happens. Enzymes (see title) in the corn get to work converting the delicious natural sugars into starch. After just a few hours, your corn could be well on its way to what my dear old grandma used to call 'horse corn'. Yummmm!

Refrigeration slows the process, but the easiest way to stop it entirely is the boiling point. So if you find yourself with an armload of freshly picked corn, blanch the excess and freeze it rather than leaving of in your crisper drawer (or worse on the counter!)

Blanching Method
Drop shucked and cleaned cobs into boiling water for five minutes. Reomove the corn to an ice bath, cool completely to arrest cooking, then dry, wrap in plastic, bag on a zipper bag and freeze.

Once you've gotten your freezer packed, and whenever you're hankering for the fresh flavor of corn, drop into boiling water for 2 minutes or bring to room temperature and shave off the cob with a knife for fresh kernel flavor. You may be tempted to dekernelize your corn before freezing, but don't, it won't keep nearly as well as freezing it right on the cob.

The Slightly Whackadoo Chemical Method
There's a plan out there for food geeks who don't see the point in freezing when chemicals can do the job. According to Alton Brown in an episode of Good Eats, by adding some lime and a tiny bit of bleach, you can effectively deactivate starchifying corn enzymes right in your kitchen sink. That's all I'm going to say about that for now.

Lemon Cucumber

Never heard of it? Neither had I until it turned up at my local market, the Bi-rite. They're almost the size of tennis balls, and plumply shaped as slightly elongated globes. They've got some tiny black dots on the outside, and they taste like a cucumber except perhaps a bit lighter and less vegetal. 

The great thing about lemon cukes is that you don't have to peel them! I know it seems like a small thing, but it's still a cool thing. The skin is very soft and fully edible. You get an nice cucumber flavor and snap, but the texture is a bit silkier and juicier than the familiar English variety.

Cucumbers with Sesame

Want something new to do with cucumbers? My dad recently went to France came back with this one for me. I made it with the very lemon cucumber shown here in less than 10 minutes. You can also do it with a regular english cucumber, just be sure to peel.

How to Make Sesame Wheels

Take a few tablespoons of sesame seeds and toast them in a pan until light golden brown. They become scented and slightly darker. Take care not to overdo them, once they get to toasting temperature they go quickly!

After the sesame seeds have cooled to room temperature, mix in a bit of salt and blend thoroughly. Next, slice your cucumber and simply press both sides into the sesame seeds. That's it! And it's fabulous and super easy.

Pile them up on a plate, serve with a nice chilled Sauvignon Blanc and you're set for an afternoon of relaxing, sesame adventure.

Two Women Who Rock

I've been a bad blogger for the past month as I took some time off and got my thoughts together about what to eat next! As I looked around, I found some very cool video podcast resources that I want to share! Disclaimer: I have not had any contact with either of these fabulous women nor their website distributor!

Cocktails
The first set of v-casts are by the Orbit Room's sensational mixologist Alberta Straub. She's no longer at the Orbit Room, and to be honest, I've been totally unable to track her down! If anyone knows of her whereabouts, please clue me. I'm into Alberta, and would love to know what's she's up to!

Here's a couple of links to some of her v-casts. Some of them are techniquey, some are recipe oriented. The thing about her podcasts, while they're somewhat uneven and confusing from a creative standpoint, you really get the sense of how she approaches flavors and combining ingredients to make something fabulous! She's the real deal.

http://www.onnetworks.com/videos/cocktails-on-the-fly

Food Science
The second set are by a ridiculously spunky food science aficionado named Dr. Kiki. She's very bubbly and funny, but all of that barely masks a seriously brainy, hard core scientist who knows what she's talking about!

She's a prof at UC Davis, and somehow did these food science video podcasts. The content is a bit roughly presented and sort of uneven in depth (she could use some better writing!), but there are some amazing gems of information and she's a delight to watch getting all serious about teflon, the maillard reaction and my favorite, how to make your own home-grown ginger ale! She literally makes fresh ginger ale in a soda bottle. I love Dr. Kiki!

http://www.onnetworks.com/videos/food-science

Check out these vids. You won't be disappointed.

Bumper Crop 1: Apricot Season. Make Compote!

Every Thursday, I get a small box of fantastic produce from a local organic, sustainably managed farm called Terra Firma Farm delivered to my urban neighborhood. I just pick it up from an apartment building foyer a block from my house. When I lived in Pittsburgh, PA, I did the same thing from a farm called Kretschmann's.

The great thing about the organic fruit and vegetable box delivery is that you get the best and freshest of what's ripe up at that moment in the season while supporting a local organic farmer. The bad part is that you get a lot of what's ripe. Often more than one can reasonably consume. Recently, I had an apricot glut.

Compote!
Most commercially available fresh apricots are picked early so they're firmer and less likely to get bruised in transport. They ripen in your fruit basket, but they often lack punch. The ones from Terra Firma were picked pretty close to peak with plenty of punch, but I had a pound and a half of very ripe apricots. I decided to make compote because it keeps fairly well in the fridge, freezes well, and I don't know a thing about home canning.

The recipe is simple, and the results can be used to spoon over yogurt, ice cream, a slab of cake or just eaten right out of the bowl. From start to finish, this took me about 45 minutes, but it was not intense at all. There was plenty of time to do other things.

The Recipe
Start with 1 to 2 pounds of ripe fruit, halved and pitted. By following the natural seam along the side of the apricot with a paring knife, you end up with the pit lying flat on one of the halves, making it easy to remove.

Boil a cup of water with about 2/3 cup of white sugar, two tablespoons of Grand Marnier, and a vanilla bean. When the sugar has dissolved completely and thing are bubbling, turn down the heat and add the fruit. Let it simmer gently for about 3-5 minutes. Be careful not to let the fruit go too far, or it will become mush. You want it fork tender but still recognizable as fruit.

When nicely tender, use a spider to fish out the apricots and set them aside in a bowl. Next, halve a washed and scrubbed lemon, squeeze it fully into the syrup, then drop in the squeezed rind and top with a pinch of salt.

While the syrup is simmering, add a tablespoon of raspberry jam into the bowl of a small sieve or one of those mesh tea strainers that opens like jaws. Drop in the tea strainer or arrange the sieve so that syrup engulfs and dissolves the jam into the mix without allowing the seeds to get away. During the cooking, make sure you taste (after serious cooling time in the tasting spoon!) for the acid and sugar balance. It's a bit hard to predict depending on the fruit you started with, so tasting is the only way to go.

Carefully cook down the liquid until it's about half the original volume. Watch it a bit, stirring from time to time. When reduced enough, let it cool on the counter top to room temperature. Remove the rind, strainer and vanilla bean then pour the syrup over the fruit and refrigerate.

The resulting compote yields soft, luscious fruit with a tart, sweet, vanilla scented syrup that's perfect with vanilla ice cream, apple pie, or yogurt. This morning, I put some on top of pancakes.

Bamboo Shoots Don't All Come in Cans

Recently I bumped into a friend who had come from the Clement street shopping district in San Francisco, an area of the city known for Asian markets. He discovered fresh bamboo shoot, and he said it was remarkably good and totally different than the blanched, beige squares most of us think about swimming in our stir fry at the local restaurant. (Thank you, Remy!)

After hunting around a bit, I found some myself and did a bit of research to figure out what I was looking at. It turns out there are hundreds of varieties of bamboo, but only a few are good eating. For a list of the edible varieties, check out Gib, the bamboo maven. When you shop for bamboo shoots in a market, you're most likely to find giant or sweet bamboo, common eating varieties. Bamboo shoots are harvested when they're just a few inches high.

Preparation
If you're lucky enough to find fresh ones, peel, slice thinly or julienne them, and then boil for 30 minutes or more in plenty of water. Cooking not only softens up the woody fibers and leaches out bitter flavors, but it also dissipates a small amount of hydrocyanic acid, which not only tastes bad, but is...well...poison. So, don't forget to boil! They're done when tender and all traces of bitterness are gone.

What's Different
Fresh bamboo shoots have a firmer, snappier texture and fresh vegetal flavor that gets completely lost in canning. You can use them in salads, for garnish on soup, or of course in your favorite asian dishes. Since they can be cut many ways: paper thin slices, square twigs, or rounds, they make for an interesting visual as well as flavor component. I cut mine into thin sheets and rolled them around rice noodles, fresh basil, barbecued tofu pieces, and a smear of hoisin.