Corn, Corn, Corn

hmm looks like over a month has gone by since I have been posting.  I started a new job and was doing some travelling so got busy and lazy but hopefully can get back to posting with regularity again.  I wrote the below post ages ago but somehow never got around to posting it.  Here goes..

Corn Stock.  It sounds like a festival of some sort, maybe a harvest festival?  But, I am talking about a stock made from corn cobs to make corn risotto.  It’s mid August and even though it has been cold and grey in San Francisco (still?!) there are fresh summer vegetables to be had.  It feels like winter but the produce says summer.  So, I have been eating corn non-stop.  Usually I boil it, cut the cobs off and stir in some butter and salt for a perfect side dish.  I also combine it with fresh cherry tomatoes and some basil and onion into a nice summer salad.  The one thing I have been doing with all my corn is saving the cobs.  My goal is to make corn stock and then…corn risotto.  I had a corn risotto once at the restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns, back when they let you choose your dinner instead of serving you what they wanted to serve you (ugh, pet peeve if I am paying for dinner I get to choose the menu) anyway back to the corn risotto, it was amazing!!  Then somewhere along the way I read about corn stock and now finally summer corn is here and it’s time for some corn stock and then the risotto.  I looked online for a recipe and many of the recipes had other ingredients, onion or carrot or jalapeño.  All good things but I was looking for the purest corn flavor possible, and I really felt that all those other ingredients would take away from the corn flavor.  I want a corn stock.  Not a vegetable corn stock.  I settled on the version from Saveur that included parsley and peppercorns and then I found Martha Stewart’s recipe which called for water and corn cobs only. Ding, ding, ding.  That’s what I wanted.  I guess I could have figured that out for myself but it’s nice to get the assurance from Martha that using only water and corn cobs is ok. 

 The instructions said to bring to a boil and simmer for 45 minutes.  I may have had the temperature too low, I’m not certain it was really simmering.  The stock tastes corny but doesn’t look as yellow as some of the pictures I saw online.  I will make corn risotto in the next day or so and update, here’s hoping for an explosion of corn flavor.  

Here's where I found the recipe, such as it is.