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Writer's picturethelisacato

What's in season in August? Corn, nature's golden fast food.

Corn is the epitome of carefree summer days. It's an easy-to-cook plant that everyone, really everyone, loves. Take a moment to really appreciate it the next time you hold a corn on the cob in your hands. Let your senses cook, too. Feel the husk's robust, smooth leaves, as green as a lush meadow. The soft, silky threads are like sunlight flashing silver on a lake. Don't the precious, delightfully sweet kernels deserve to be so carefully packaged? They are nutritional gold, as far as I'm concerned, as golden as the August sun itself.


August is the best time to buy the most succulent, fresh corn from your market or supermarket. It really is easy to prepare: pull off the husk from top to bottom, remove the silvery threads (a great task for kids), then pop the cobs in boiling water for 5 minutes, and voila, you're have a delicious, healthy plant on your plate.


Or you can leave the husk on and line your cobs on the grill. They will stay beautifully moist and if you turn them occasionally, they will be done in 15-20 minutes.


If you have the time, take a hunk of room temperature butter and with a fork, mix in chopped garlic, spring onion, and any herbs you may find kicking around in your fridge. Herb butter will make your corn on the cob shine - and add herby vitamins and minerals for an extra hit of nutritional value.


Or simply drizzle your corn with a bit of olive oil and salt. If you like, for a little bit of spice, add some chili flakes.


Maybe you or someone that you're cooking for has a hard time biting into a cob. You can remedy this by cutting the corn in half, standing it up on its end, and slicing the kernels off with a bread knife (see picture below in the gallery). You can do this before or after cooking.


This year, like so many others, I was hit by a summer cold. The temperatures have been hovering around 30 degrees for the past week here in Berlin, but despite the heat, I pined for a bowl of nourishing soup. Trying to come up with a recipe that wouldn't require my standing by the hot stove for longer than absolutely necessary proved a challenge, though. That's when a column of sunlight fell upon the pyramid of corn at my supermarket to light my way: I would make corn soup.


Since corn originally comes from Mexico, I thought that it would be fun to make a soup inspired by Mexican flavors. I'd buy coriander, limes and Jalapeños and make a Jalapeño pesto to drizzle on top, and spring onions for a finishing touch. But when I got home I realized that, in my weakened state, I'd only bought the corn and the spring onions - I'd forgotten the coriander, limes, AND the Jalapeños.


Nevermind, good, fresh ingredients don't require much dressing up or fanfare. At the end of the day, cooking ought to fulfill its purpose (create a tasty, nutritious meal), not drive a person crazy. My body said it wanted soup, so I listened, and made the soup that I could. And it was delicious.


Below, you'll find my recipe for Corn Soup, with and without the fanfare. But please do keep on reading to learn more about the nutritional value of corn, and to find out whether corn is a vegetable or not.




While there's lots to love about corn's nutritional value, since it does deliver our bodies with minerals such as magnesium and potassium, the Vitamins C, Vitamins B1, B2, and B9, as well as fiber, there's nonetheless good reason not to overdo corn consumption. Its delicious sweetness means that it contains shorter carbohydrate chains i.e. sugary starches.


The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating doesn't even include corn in its recommended five servings of vegetables a day. Why? Because corn is a grain, belonging to the family of sweet grasses to which wheat, oats, rye, barley, and millet also belong.


Since corn is a carbohydrate, it's a good idea to treat it like any other grain by adding other plants to your plate to balance out the nutritional value of your meal. Make a crisp, green salad to go with your boiled corn. Throw a red pepper or some tomatoes on your grill together with the cobs. Make your meal colorful.


I fulfilled this purpose by including carrots, celery, onions, and garlic in my corn soup. The combination of beans and corn (just as any other legume with any other grain), by the way, creates a complete protein that supplies the human body with all of the essential amino acids it needs.


I do recommend eating your fill of corn in August while it's fresh, and keeping cans of corn in stock during the long winter. It is, after all, a tasty whole food full of nutrients. But corn should ideally be a plant that you eat, maybe say, once or twice a week rather than on a daily basis, and which you should treat as a grain rather than a vegetable.




Corn Soup, with or without Fanfare


For the Corn Soup


  • 4 ears of corn

  • 2 tbsp oil

  • 1 onion

  • 2 cloves of garlic

  • 4 small/medium sized carrots

  • 2 celery sticks or a chunk of celeriac

  • 2 tsps vegetable stock

  • 1 400g can of black beans

  • 1 spring onion

  • 1/2 tsp smoked paprika or to taste (optional)

  • salt and pepper



For the Fanfare


  • 1 clove of garlic

  • 1/2 cup jalapeños, fresh or from the glass

  • 1/4 cup raw or roasted sunflower seeds

  • 1 handful of cilantro including stems

  • 1/4 cup olive oil

  • 2 tbsp white wine vinegar

  • 1tsp salt



To Make the Soup

  1. Heat oil in a large pot. Dice onions and let them sweat over a medium low heat. Cube carrots, celery, and garlic, adding them one after the other and stirring occasionally to keep the veg from sticking to the bottom of the pot or turning brown, perhaps even turning the heat down a bit.

  2. Cut the corn cobs in half. Stand each half cob up on its sliced end, and, using a bread knife, saw off the kernels. Add the corn kernels and the cobs to the pot of veg.

  3. Boil water and cover the veg by two finger's-width. Add vegetable stock. Bring the soup to a boil, then turn down to a simmer and let cook for 10-20 minutes until the carrots and celery are soft.

  4. In the meantime, chop the spring onion into rings and set aside.

  5. Once the soup is done, remove the corn cobs. Blend the veg to a creamy consistency, adding more water if the soup is too thick. Flavor with salt and pepper (and if you're adding the fanfare, smoked paprika) according to your taste.

  6. Drain and rinse the black beans and add them to soup, warming them up over a low heat.

  7. Serve with a sprinkling of spring onions on top.



To make the Fanfare

  1. While the soup is cooking at a simmer, roughly chop garlic, cilantro, and jalapeños. Add these ingredients plus sunflower seeds to a food processor and pulse until smooth. Add oil, vinegar, and salt and blend until smooth.

  2. Drizzle over the served soup and enjoy.


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