Here’s another all-time favorite that was part of my repertoire at the old Boston restaurant. It is another prime example of restaurant logic with regards to the construction and presentation of a dish, since the base (the soup itself) is incredibly easy but the final presentation takes advantage of a large mis-en-place which makes more sense to readily have at your disposal in the professional kitchen than it does in the home kitchen. To wit: in addition to preparing the corn soup, you will need avocado, a crab salad, pancetta, roasted corn, and if you’re bold, a basil oil, each prepared and held in their own way. So don’t think of this as a quick just-got-home-from-work, what-should-I-cook-for-dinner-tonight kind of thing, but if you’re having a few people over that you want to impress, this is a good way to start things out. Also don’t think of this as a hearty corn soup that will serve as an entire meal unto itself – it’s not really designed that way and should be more of an opening salvo in a meal that delights and amazes. This dish fairly screams summer and is as much about understanding the essence of each ingredient at its finest as it is about understanding the relationship each possesses with the corn, as well as with each other.
Finally, a word about the basil oil – as I’ve written elsewhere, I generally don’t ever bother with the basil oil, since it doesn’t keep and I rarely need more than a few drops for each application. But the truth is, I also was never very good at it and haven’t ever had much success outside the professional kitchen. There are lots of recipes available online that don’t seem that difficult, but none seem like they would yield an infused oil with the same character and class of the one that these recipes call for. Many just whip together basil and olive oil in the blender and call it a day. But let’s be clear – we’re not making pesto here and we’re not talking about something to firehose a pizza with. This should be something where one drop transports you to the middle of a cloud made out of basil. The technique we used involved a quick blanch then compressing the leaves between paper towels until they were virtually 100% moisture free, then submerging in olive oil and heating over extremely low heat (it never came close to something like frying – the thing is, oil changes chemically when it is cooked, and you don’t want the olive oil, nor the oils in the basil responsible for much of its character, to ever come close to anything close to cooking – even the whirring of the blender blades can heat it too much) for about an hour, then blending, then filtering through a coffee filter. The result was something not only intense in flavor and aroma, but also in color – its drops were a deep and shimmery India green that were visible from across the room. Most of my attempts at home have resulted in a pale, lifeless oil that barely possesses the redolence of basil, let alone the color and character needed for the desired effect. It’s best, in my book, to stick with a top-quality, greenish-tinged olive oil and keep it moving.
I think this recipe is good for 2 people – it’s easily scaled though. I’ve always used a scalloped melon baller for the avocado, and I think of that shape as germane to the whole experience. You can use a standard melon baller, but please don’t debase the dish by trying to cut slices or cubes. Unless you majored in vegetable garnish with a minor in eclectic garnishing tools, go out and buy a scalloped melon baller, even if you never use it for anything else and only make this dish once ever two years, like me.
Ingredients:
For the corn soup
- 6 ears perfectly ripe corn
- 1 pint heavy cream
- Salt and white pepper
For the crab salad
- 8 oz jumbo lump crab meat
- 2 TBSP crème fraîche
- 1 tsp chives, slice in 1/64th inch rounds (don’t fuck around with these, please)
- 1 squirt lemon juice
- 1 TBS olive oil
- Salt and pepper
For the pancetta
- 2 slices paper thin pancetta
- 1 TBS olive oil
For the avocado
- 1 perfectly ripe avocado
- A small pinch of fleur de sel (or another interesting kind of salt – pink might also be nice)
For the toasted corn
- Kernels from ½ of one ear
- 2 TBSP butter
- Salt and pepper
Directions:
Everything can be prepared in advance and either chilled or at room temperature except the crab salad, which should be made when the dish is ready to serve.
Start by making and chilling the corn soup. Shuck all 6 ears of corn, leaving as much of stalk at the base as possible, and removing as much of the silk as you can without going totally crazy. Hold the corn by the stalk and place the tip in a large stainless steel bowl. Run a large kitchen knife down the ear to remove the kernels into the bowl. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat, until all four sides have been done. Reserve two sides worth in a separate bowl for your toasted corn garnish. When you’ve finished with all six ears, hold each one in the same position and run a spoon down each cut side in order to remove any of the milky ends of the kernel you missed into the bowl.
Juice the corn, repeating the process with the pulp if necessary. Squeeze the pulp through a cheese cloth into the juice when you’ve finished, to capture any last drops of moisture. Place the juice in a saucepan and heat over medium heat for about 20 minutes. You’ll want to be stirring this constantly as it heats, so that it doesn’t scorch or stick to the bottom. The idea here is that you’re developing the natural sweetness in the corn, cooking it to bring out its sugars and get rid of the chalkiness of raw corn. That chalkiness is starch, and as they cook, they’ll thicken the juice. You can almost tell the moment that this is done, and it suddenly takes on a slightly thicker, puffed appearance. Taste and evaluate – it should be deliciously sweet, with none of the raw flavor or texture of uncooked corn. If it is, remove from the heat and pass through a fine-mesh strainer. Stir in the cream, salt, and white pepper, then place in the refrigerator until fully chilled. It’s fine to make this overnight.
While the soup is chilling, make the other mise en place items: peel half the avocado without marring the surface, then using the scalloped melon baller, create 10 balls (5 per plate), place on parchment paper in a low, broad Tupperware, and place in the fridge. Do not stack, and use clean hands to handle them, so that you don’t get avocado smear everywhere. Be careful and gentle – they should be delicate.
Next, film the bottom of a small pan with olive oil and place over medium low heat. Slide the pancetta slices in and cook until crispy, flipping once in the middle if you deem it necessary. Drain on a paper towel and hold at room temperature until ready to serve. If you need to hold it over night, do so in the fridge, but make sure to bring it up to room temp before serving. The fat does weird things and the texture is wrong when served chilled.
Remove every last piece of silk from the corn kernels you’ve reserved. Melt the butter in a small pan over high heat (you could probably use the pancetta fat/olive oil mixture if you want, but I do like butter and corn, I must say) and add the reserved corn kernels when it’s foamy. Salt and pepper, then cook until the kernels are browned on at least one side. Reserve at room temperature until ready to serve, or in the fridge over night – see above re. pancetta.
When you’re ready to go, make the crab salad. Place all the ingredients in a small bowl, and stir together with a small spoon as gently as possible so as not to break up the chunks of crab. You want the mixture to be totally even but you don’t want to whip the crab to small shreds, which it will devolve into if encouraged.
To plate, it is best to use bowls with a broad flat base. Plate in the following manner: Divide the crab salad evenly between two bowls, mounding it in the exact middle of the bowl. Place five avocado balls evenly spaced around the perimeter of the bowl. Put a tiny pinch of whatever kind of salt you’re using directly on the avocado. Sprinkle the toasted corn in between them roughly but evenly. Don’t let the corn land on top of the avocado.
At the restaurant, the plate was sent out like this and the soup brought out in a small gravy boat and poured tableside. I find this a bit tedious and in no small way pretentious to do at home, so I fill up the bowls myself and serve right away. Remove the soup from the fridge, give it a few brisk stirs with a spoon or whisk to make sure it is homogenous, then pour it in slowly until the avocado is 2/3rds submerged. You don’t want to change the position of anything or wash anything away by pouring, so make sure it’s slow and controlled. Some of the corn will float and some will not – that’s good.
Place the piece of pancetta directly on top of the crab. Using a squeeze bottle (ideally) or your thumb over the bottle to reduce the flow to a drizzle, float a few drops or a quick ring of oil around the perimeter – if you’re using basil oil, way to go, if not, and dark, delicious olive oil works fine. Serve immediately and bask in the essence of summer.
The Grumpy Gastronome 
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