"Spent corn cobs harbour masses of flavour that is a shame to waste."
Tom Hunt
Because - would you believe? - you can make this gorgeous looking Corn crème brulée with coffee liqueur with them. Wow don't you think?
It's Ottolenghi of course, but it's actually, I think, not quite an original thought of his, because there are several other recipes for corn crème brulée out there, although most of them - admittedly from a very brief scan - used corn kernels, not a kind of corn milk made from the spent corn cobs. I'm definitely going to try this some time soon. Next time I have somebody over to dinner - or lunch. I know - it might be awful - but then again it might just be wow.
I had been sitting at my computer for some time wondering what to write about and pondering on a couple of ideas, and then I saw that gorgeous photograph. Not enough to do a whole post on - unless I had made them - but enough to set me wondering what else you could do with those dead corn cobs.
I was completely aware that you could make corn Stock from spent corn cobs, something that was confirmed in the next item in The Guardian newsletter that presented me with Ottolenghi's corn brulée. In this article Tom Hunt presented his recipe, but I subsequently found that there are as many recipes for corn cob stock as ...? Lots and lots anyway. Some were very complicated, some were very simple, some just used water, some used milk. And they probably all swore that their version was the best. So experiment. I think I probably go along with those who tell you to keep it simple though because the flavour of the corn will otherwise be lost. One writer suggested the addition of some fennel only, for example. The Cornersmith people from Sydney charred their spent cobs on a griddle, barbecue or over a gas flame and then simply cooked them in water with 4 garlic cloves (skin on), 1 teaspoon black peppercorns and some salt. Which is pretty basic. Use your stock any way that you would use any other kind of stock.
Or alternatively you can freeze your dead cobs and then chuck them into a soup you are making to add to the flavour, or into something you are poaching - chicken or fish for example. This very luscious looking Smoked fish chowder from Douglas McMaster not only used the spent cob but it used the bones from the smoked fish too. A real zero-waste dish.
And while we are still on soup - what about those last vestiges of corn milk?
"Use the back of a knife to scrape the naked cobs and remove the starchy, milky liquid, called corn milk, that remains. Catch the liquid in a bowl and then add it to corn soup, corn pudding, and creamed corn to help thicken it and add extra flavor." Kitchen
But you can be cleverer than that, and most of it I confess, comes from the Americans, - who do indeed love their corn. So first of all let's turn to drinks.
Apparently you can made a tea from the corn silk - just steep it in boiling water. But I got the impression that this was more medicinal than pleasurable. And besides it's the silk not the cobs. However, Adam Kaye on the website Edible Manhattan, creates Corn cob lemonade from spent corn cobs and lemon peel, with lemongrass and lemon thyme as well. Not sure about that one.
The real surprise here though is cocktails. Now I don't drink cocktails, and it's obviously a wide and wonderful world of experimentation, some of it very weird. And it seems that corn has been used in various ways in cocktails for some time. This one is called The Vixen and makes use of a Champagne corn cob syrup made with those spent corn cobs. Others do similar things. There are literally hundreds of cocktails that use corn in there somewhere. And I'm guessing that corn syrup itself, that you can buy in bottles might well be derived from spent corn cobs. At least sometimes.
Jam - yes jam. Well the Americans call it jelly of course, and even they were sometimes a little damning with faint praise about this. Corn has no pectin, so there tends to be a lot of sugar and commercial pectin. So I propose two recipes here one from Taste of Home and another from a lady called Christine Burns Rudalevige - the first being the basic version, the second, a little more refined. I have my doubts about this as jam I have to say but the suggestion of using it as a glaze on meat might be a goof one.
And talking of glazing, the Americans who are big into long slow barbecuing/smoking of cuts of meat such as beef ribs, suggest using spent corn cobs as supplementary fuel to give an extra taste. Like the French use fennel sticks when barbecuing fish. It doesn't seem to be all that strong a flavour though it does apparently provide more smoke.
And speaking of smoke, here is possibly a world-changing use of spent corn cobs. In China there is a project from an organisation called My climate to replace the coal burning stoves used in much of China - very polluting - with stoves adapted to burn spent corn cobs - which are plentiful and, presumably cause less pollution. There is a short video on it that you can watch here.
Maybe it's a wonderful thing, maybe not. At least someone is trying.
But let's end where we began - back in England - with something indulgent made from something we might otherwise throw away - Corn cob ice-cream - not from Ottolenghi this time, but from Tom Hunt. Basically another way of using that kind of milk you get from scraping the used cob and boiling it up with some sugar.
Who knew you could do so much with something so simple. I shall at least be doing the stock and soup thing.
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