Easy Summer Corn Salad

A few days ago, I mentioned a pea and mint salad that I've been eating a lot this summer.

Here's another salad that's easy to throw together. There's not much to it, which makes using the freshest ingredients possible even more important.

In yesterday's CSA box, we got several ears of "Vision" sweet corn. I've written about my love of corn before. But I have to say that this is the best corn I have ever tasted.

I don't know what it was — the variety, the fact that it's organic (does that affect the taste of corn much? Most sweet corn I've had has been local, but not organic), the exact seven-minute cooking time … I'm not sure, but I think the variety has a lot to do with it. It's super-sweet and was perfectly tender-crisp after cooking.

The flavor and texture make it the perfect main ingredient for this salad. You do need to cook the corn first and then let it get cold (though I think it would be very tasty warm, too). After the corn is cooked (seven minutes!), cut the kernels off the cobs and store in the refrigerator. (Ours was refrigerated overnight.)

Then, in a bowl, toss the corn kernels with some halved grape or cherry tomatoes. We got a container of sugarplum tomatoes in our CSA box yesterday, too. They are seriously amazing — totally sweet and a beautiful orange hue, and I just love the name.

Next, add some feta (I've been eating a lot of this lately), followed by finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley and basil. Drizzle a little bit of good olive oil over the top just to help everything come together, and finish with a sprinkling of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Toss everything together. Eat. Love.

Before you wrinkle up your nose at the part about cutting the kernels off of ears of corn, let me say this: It takes less time to do this than it does to microwave a bag of frozen corn, drain it and pour it into a bowl, and it tastes SO much better. You will be very disappointed in yourself for not having done this before. You will want to cook hundreds of ears of corn this summer, cut off the kernels and then freeze them so that you can have delicious sweet corn in the middle of February, which I think is an excellent idea. You will eat this corn in the middle of February, sweater-clad and shivering, and you will instantly feel warm and sunny on the inside. And then you will ask yourself, "Seasonal Affective Disorder? What Seasonal Affective Disorder?"

Or, you will just eat this salad for lunch and call it a day.

Sweet Corn: The Official Food of Summer

Technically tonight was the second time we ate sweet corn this summer, but this is the first batch we've made.

In central Pennsylvania, there are a few unofficial markers of summertime: the opening of Massey's Frozen Custard (for Carlisle folks, anyway); the appearance of fireflies (and, later, the humming din of cicadas); and the arrival of local sweet corn.

Benjamin and I went to our favorite farm stand today for yarrow to plant and more berries to eat. The owner dumped a wooden bushel full of freshly picked bicolor sweet corn into a pile on one of the tables, and I couldn't resist.

When I was a kid, we ate corn all the time in the summer. I remember sitting on one of our patio chairs with a brown paper grocery bag at my feet, stripping the ears of their green husks and fine strings of silk.

There are plenty of tasty ways to eat corn. I happen to love the Mexican street-food preparation, which slathers a roasted ear in a concoction of mayonnaise, chili powder, lime and cheese. My favorite, though, is also the simplest: boiled for seven minutes (What can I say? I'm particular) and then bathed with butter, salt and pepper and eaten right off the cob.

There are also lots of ways to literally eat corn. Some people start at the end and go horizontally to the other end before starting over again on the next row, typewriter-style. Some people start at an end and circle all the way around and out. Others start in the middle and do a combination typewriter-circle (I've been told this is "weird" by nearly everybody who's watched me eat corn).

I am convinced that no one, however, is as good at eating corn as my father. No. One. He is good at lots of things, great at some things, but he's downright masterful at a couple things: finding excellent parking spots and eating corn. He starts at one end and bites down in a manner that's both forceful and delicate, leaving no trace of the kernels that were once there. His cobs look as if someone's taken a corn zipper to them when he's finished. They are clean and smooth, unlike my mother's and my corn, which are raggedy and often have entire kernels still intact.

My father can barely stand to eat corn-on-the-cob with anyone else. He inspects our discarded cobs and shakes his head in disappointment at our performance. It doesn't matter that he's perhaps the only man on earth this compulsive about how corn is "supposed" to be eaten and that practically everyone's corn is raggedy when they've finished with it. In my father's view, his way is the only way to eat corn. I suppose he has a point: If you want to really enjoy something, you'd better make every bite count.