A Study of Corn

Sometimes there's nothing as intriguing for a cook as taking one ingredient and riffing on it several ways in the same dish.  Corn opens itself to this task maybe more than any other staple.  Crunchy, juicy, unctuous, smooth - all its textures.   Sweet, toasty, flinty, buttery-without-butter - all its flavors.  Corn is an entity.  Cooked into a porridge of polenta, grilled on the cob and buttered, popped into a little white explosion of movie theater joy. It is limitless and yet it is all corn.

In this dish we have a polenta souffle over a puree of sweet corn and poblano rajas topped with a salad of arugula, hot smoked salmon, and avocado all dressed with a pumpkinseed/chili yogurt.  We cooked polenta as we always do with lots of garlic, herbs, milk and chicken stock and then turned it into a souffle base with egg yolks and parmesan.  Then we folded in some beaten egg whites, popped it in the oven and in twenty minutes: a pillowy but cornmeal-coarse souffle.

Corn shows us its silky side when pureed and the marriage of sweet corn and roasted poblano peppers is one of the truly great combos in the vegetable kingdom.  The raspy but deep poblano plays high and low over the sweet, sweet corn creating this spicy/roasty flavor profile.   We often toss in a pinch of turmeric when we work with pureed corn, which allows its luminous yellow color to reassert itself.

And the yogurt dressing allows for the arrival of one corn's other great friends: pumpkin seeds.  We actually took the leftover dressing from the Rick Bayless-inspired salad from a few posts ago and mixed it with equal parts plain whole milk yogurt.  The result is not bashful as it brightens the rich avocado and king salmon, and then rains down on the corn below like contrails of flavor.

As I look back I can't help but think a little chili-spiced popcorn speckled about the plate....