Sauteed Corn with Garlic and Slow- Roasted Tomatoes
That effing fork
For about six weeks a year, I am obsessed with fresh corn, and eat it about three times a week. I even ate an insanely delicious corn-stuffed croissant this week from this bakery in Northampton, Massachusetts, and normally I'd say putting anything inside a croissant is sick and wrong.
So I am sorry if this is repetitive, but I assure you it will be last mention of corn for a while. I am also addicted to tomatoes, and so it was perfect earlier this summer to find a new recipe that featured both together. I particularly like the sweet little Sungold tomatoes that are so plentiful this time of year.
This one is a pared-down version of a good Food 52 recipe which is much more labor intensive, as it requires you make garlic confit. I found that using garlic confit in this recipe mutes the garlic flavor. I like the stronger stuff. (I can eat garlic confit with a spoon, like ice cream). My version also skips the pasta. I mean, you're already eating corn.
Can we discuss one thing first? That fork. That one effing fork you HATE. HATE HATE HATE. You know which one I mean. You don't know how it got there, you don't remember bringing it into the house. It doesn't match the others. Maybe it's made of some inferior metal alloy, like nickel and manganese. Or maybe it has an ornate crud-collecting handle. It makes everything you eat with it taste like day old gum. You would rather lick a doorknob than put that flatware atrocity anywhere near your mouth. Setting the table, you go into the cutlery drawer (I am Canadian so, yes, I call that shit cutlery) looking for some forks that match, and you see it there. Mocking you. Because it knows you will never throw it out. You can't. It is a functional object, even though it is an abomination. You go on, feeling a rising bile of hate every time you open the drawer, knowing it continues to live there year after year, slowly oxidizing to an unappetizing shade of gun metal grey from disuse. Well, I mentioned my hatred of this fork to my husband. He opened the garbage can and tossed it. Was that so hard?
Now I have a new nemesis. It just showed up in the drawer this summer and I don't know where it came from. This time it's a spoon.
Here is my quick n' dirty version of that Food 52 recipe, which is I think is better, because garlic.
Ingredients
1 pint of Sungold or any cherry tomatoes (you can do up to 2 pints, if you really like a lot of tomatoes...)
5 or 6 ears of corn
3 (or more) cloves of garlic
olive oil
salt and pepper
1 /4 cup of parsley or other herb, like chives or cilantro (can also add less if you like)
Instructions
First slow roast the tomatoes. This is easy, but it requires that you put the tomatoes in the oven well in advance, so this is not a great recipe for a night when you walk into the kitchen after work and need to make dinner fast.
Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Take a jelly roll pan and line it with parchment. Put the tomatoes on the pan, and drizzle them with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Put them in the oven for ~2.5-3 hours. At around the 1.5 hour mark, poke each tomato with a knife so that they ooze. After about 2.5- 3 hours, the roasted tomatoes will have gotten wrinked and flat, and the juice will have carmelized into excellent pools of brown tomato goo. The tomatoes have a jammy sweetness when they are roasted this way.
When the tomatoes are ready, shuck five ears of corn (learn about my hatred of corn-shucking in my other corn post). Smash the garlic cloves and dice the garlic. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a non stick skillet. Add the garlic, and cook until it starts to release its ambrosial garlic smell. Add the shucked corn kernels and saute, stirring in the pan, until the corn been cooked in the oil and starts to take on a deeper color of yellow. Add the tomatoes, making sure to scoop up all the delicious carmelized goo from the parchment and add it to the pan. Salt and pepper to taste.Then add the parsley, or whatever herb you choose. Once the tomatoes are tossed with the corn it is ready to eat!