No two foods are more evocative of summer to me than garden-fresh tomatoes and sweet corn. Both fall into the category of “available all year round, but why bother?”. Tomatoes go from juicy, tangy, sweet, vibrant and pleasingly misshapen to pallid, mealy, flavorless, numbingly uniform globes. The sweet pop of kernels in freshly-picked corn becomes starchy mush in the off season. The out of season versions just don’t hold a candle to the real thing. Put them both together and it’s like summer in a bowl. The kind of fleeting pleasure to savor while it lasts and remember (or look forward to) fondly the other 10 months of the year.
This isn’t so much a recipe as a guideline. The freshness of the ingredients is much more important than their proportions. Use the absolute freshest corn and tomatoes you can find.
fresh sweet corn, boiled and cut from the cob (I used 2 ears.)
tomatoes, cut into bite sized pieces (I used 5 tomatoes about the diameter of a fifty cent piece and cut them into quarters.)
small handful basil
salt and pepper
glug of olive oil
Mix everything and serve. If you can let it sit for an hour or so to let the flavors meld, great. Much more than an hour and the tomatoes will start to get soggy.
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We’re clearly thinking along the same lines this week.
Comment by JenniferP September 9, 2009 @ 11:54 pmYeah…I saw your post right after mine went up. What better way to make it feel like summer just a bit longer?
Comment by Eli September 10, 2009 @ 8:20 amIn just a month, tomatoes will come in cans.
Comment by JenniferP September 11, 2009 @ 8:54 am