Imagine summer without corn and tomatoes. You can't, can you? That would be like thinking about French cuisine without chocolate and vanilla, Irish food without potatoes, or Italian sauces without tomatoes. In the American Heartland corn and tomatoes are as essential an ingredient in the recipe for summer as capsicum pepper is to an Indian curry or paprika is to Hungarian goulash.
Look back five centuries to the time of Isabella when there was no chocolate or vanilla in France, no capsicum (chile) pepper in India, no paprika in Hungary, and believe it or not, not a single tomato had ever been seen in an Italian cuccina or trattoria. Five hundred years ago, these foods — along with potatoes, many kinds of beans, squashes and pumpkins, turkey, pineapple, wild rice, peanuts, and pecans — were only found in the New World. Each of these foods had its own unique history.
In the years following the "discovery" of the New World, native foods were shared, borrowed, transported great distances across vast oceans, and changed in different ways depending on the shore to which each was transported. In subsequent years, each found its way into the cuisine of its adopted homeland in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean where they continued to be refined and cultivated. (I recommend you watch Padma Lakshmi’s popular Hulu series "Taste the Nation" that expands and redefines the meaning of American food.)
After centuries of immigration to the Americas, the journey of these native foods has come full circle. Gradually, there has been a fusion of flavors from the Old World with the traditional diet of the Heartland. Then, with time, we deem this melting pot of tastes — from French fries and ketchup, to pizza and Cornflakes — as uniquely American as apple pie, until we are reminded that apple pie actually originated in England.
Here in the Midwest, corn marks the progress of summer's calendar. In the weeks before the September harvest, a farmer will stop in the early evening on his way home from the fields to pull off an ear of corn, shuck the husk, and study the rows that have grown within. With a slow and careful eye, the farmer reads his future like a fortune teller reads the palm of a hand.
My summer food memories include driving across the Hartsburg bottoms when the corn rows were planted right up to the edge of the gravel roads and stalks towered over the cab of the red Chevy pickup that I loved driving back then. It was easy to get lost in that maze of maize. Tassels had just started to appear by July. By mid-July, sweet corn and fat, juicy tomatoes from backyard gardens found their way to the table just about every meal.
Because much of what I create in our kitchen is Italian in spirit and flavor, I often use sun-dried tomatoes packed in virgin olive oil and fresh basil when I’m preparing a fresh pasta dish. The drying process for the tomatoes is easy. Put tin foil on a cookie sheet. Slice plum or Roma tomatoes and arrange them face up on the cookie sheet. Sprinkle the tomatoes with Kosher salt and "dry" them in a very slow oven (200°) overnight for approximately 12 hours. When the tomatoes look dry, pack them in a sterilized jar, add several fresh basil leaves, and cover them with virgin olive oil. Seal the jar and store the sun-filled treasures in your pantry.
Kit loves a bowl of hot tomato soup for lunch any season of the year. So, now’s the perfect time for me to try a recipe from a wonderful website/food blog called "The Common Ingredient." It was launched by a group of friends here in Columbia to help local organizations fight COVID-19 food insecurity. Among the featured chefs/cooks is former MU Executive Chef Daniel Pliska. In his food story he says, "With a good harvest (of your own tomatoes) comes the challenge of how to prepare them, before they go bad, beyond the normal salad or sandwich options. One good option is tomato soup which can be frozen and eaten during the cold dark months of winter." Try his delicious "Cream of Tomato Fennel Soup" recipe https://ift.tt/36DPyX7.
The combinations and possibilities for preparing corn and tomatoes are endless. They taste their sweetest and finest on the palette when fresh and served without fuss. NYTimes Cooking editor Sam Sifton suggests not cooking them at all. For some, the taste of summer is a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich. On July 20, Sifton featured Melissa Clark’s recipe for tomato sandwiches which calls for you "to rub garlic and tomato onto the bread, wall to wall, of course, before applying the mayonnaise, same." Not being a fan of mayonnaise, I prefer a plate of thickly sliced tomatoes accompanied by buttered sweet corn. A little salt and a slice of Italian focaccia bread to sop up any leftover buttery juices and that, my friends, is a meal fit for a queen.
Come winter, we’ll continue to enjoy the flavors of summer in soups and jars of pesto created and preserved while the harvest is plentiful. And we’ll remember for a lifetime the sweet taste of fresh corn and tomatoes. Plain and simply delicious.
Cathy Salter is a geographer and columnist who lives with her husband, Kit, in southern Boone County at a place they call Boomerang Creek.
The Link LonkJuly 27, 2020 at 12:28PM
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Notes From Boomerang Creek: Sweet summer memories of corn and tomatoes - Neosho Daily News
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