I’ve always been a purist about summer corn. Get it from the field to the pot of boiling water as fast as you can, schmear it with soft butter, sprinkle on a little coarse salt and gnaw away.
Why fiddle around with one of summer’s most precious gifts, I always figured.
Last night I discovered a recipe that makes a strong case for fiddling.
Fettuccine with Summer Corn, Bacon, and Shiitake Mushrooms is a easy, elegant, supremely satisfying creation that screams “summer” while offering the high-level comfort-quotient of winter foods.
New York City chef Andrew Carmellini is the genius behind this dish that involves just a handful of ingredients and takes less than 30 minutes to make. Carmellini boasts that he’s a “Midwestern boy at heart” and loves to play with corn, in pastas, fillings, sauces, custards and even gelati.
For this dish, he uses corn kernels pureed with a bit of milk and cream to create a luxurious yet light “cream” sauce. The bacon is regular bacon, diced. Readily available white mushrooms are just as good as shiitake. I adapted the recipe by slowly sautéing one sweet onion and adding that to the mix.
The recipe comes from Carmellini’s book, “Urban Italian.” It’s available at Amazon.com.
FETTUCCINE WITH SUMMER CORN, BACON, AND SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS
Serves 4
1 ½ cups diced bacon
6 cups fresh summer corn kernels (cut from 9 to 10 ears)
2 pounds shiitake mushrooms (or oyster or wild), each one cut in half
1/2 cup whole milk
½ cup heavy cream
¼ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper, plus more to taste
Pinch cayenne pepper
1 pound fettuccine, fresh or dried
½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
½ cup chopped fresh parsley
Pinch of salt
Put a large pot of salted water on to boil.
Sweat the bacon in a medium pot at medium-high heat, without any oil, until the fat is rendered and the bacon begins to crisp, about 3 minutes.
Add 3 cups of corn and the mushrooms to the bacon pot and cook together until the flavors blend and the mushrooms caramelize slightly, about 4 minutes.
In a blender or food processor, blend the remaining 3 cups of corn, the milk and the cream together on high speed until the mixture is all liquid, about 1 minute.
Strain the corn-cream mixture through a chinois or fine strainer into the bacon-mushroom pot, pushing the mixture down with a heavy spoon so all the liquid ends up in the pot. Simmer all the ingredients together until the corn mixture heats through and starts to thicken about 2 minutes. (I skipped the straining step and liked the texture of the sauce.)
Add the black pepper and cayenne pepper, If the pasta isn’t finished yet, remove the sauce from the heat and reserve.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package directions. (Carmellini uses homemade fettuccine and cooks it for about 2 minutes.)
Remove the pasta with a pair of tongs and add it to the bacon-mushroom-corn mixture in the pot. Mix well to thoroughly coat the pasta. Turn off the heat and mix in the parsley and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Season with salt and more pepper.
Plate the pasta, covering each serving with the sauce that remains in the pot. Make sure that you get all the good bits of bacon, corn and mushrooms at the bottom.
(Adapted from “Urban Italian” by Andrew Carmellini.)
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