Summer’s Sweetest Vegetable

WEATHER PERMITTING

BY IAN KNAUER

My grandfather was famous

for his vegetable garden

His rows of beets seemed to glow burgundy at their base and furl upward into green. The summer squash was a well-tucked blanket or comforter with flecks of sun-gold yellow that sparked from underneath when the breeze fluffed the leaves back and forth. His corn stood at soldier-like attention in perfectly straight, weedless columns—a platoon of light green feathered uniforms clutching tightly wrapped grenades of sweet corn.

Those kernels popped like caviar.

their juice was as sweet as punch.

It was the corn that I looked so forward to at the end of June, when the first ears were ripped from the stalk. I can still hear the tear of the husk, paper-like and creaky. We ate it raw in the field. Those kernels popped like caviar. Their juice was as sweet as punch. This is what I look for when I buy the season’s first sweet corn. You have to be able to eat it without cooking. The longer an ear of corn spends off the stalk the less sweet it becomes. Its sugars immediately begin to convert to starch. Sweet corn is made to be eaten right away. It waits for no meal.

It is tightly layered and hugs itself,

guarding the golden candy-sweet treasure.

Today I stand at the farmer’s market and spend an uncomfortable amount of time hovering over the bins of corn before I choose a test ear. The wrapping of the husk has to be just so. It is tightly layered and hugs itself, guarding the golden candy-sweet treasure. The silk is a pale verdant, almost translucent, and moist—never dry. I peel back the top to see the kernels that are plump with sugars, ready to burst under the slightest pressure. I dig my thumbnail in and feel how they pop. I rub the juice between my fingers, feeling for even a little starch. I buy the ear and rip it open. I eat it in front of the farmer. I can tell it was picked that morning and give the early-rising grower a knowing look of approval and pleasure. I buy enough for lunch and head home. If the corn is not just so, I change the menu.

Raw corn salad is a wonder to behold. Stripped from the cob and tossed with a simple olive oil and cider vinegar dressing and a handful of fresh basil and dill, the kernels become balanced with acid and salt and herbs. Their sweetness is made complex, even sophisticated in the farmy-est of ways. The salad is my mark of summer’s start when the garden work of spring begins to yield for the season. It is when those perfectly straight, weedless rows of the garden all seem worth it.