Corn makes tasty autumn appearance on K-W restaurant plates: Andrew Coppolino
For Tim Beirnes and other local growers, the corn season started off slowly but caught up and is still producing excellent cobs for local consumers and restaurants.
Beirnes operates T.J.'s Farm Fresh, growing sweet corn on about 30 acres near Kossuth Road in Cambridge, next to the Butterfly Conservatory.
"We were a week late starting our season, due to the weather, but since that slow start, it's been a banner year," says Beirnes.
With 14 varieties of corn planted, some as late as July, Beirnes says there will be fresh local corn-on-the-cob coming out of his fields well into the Thanksgiving period.
"I would say it's on target to go past that time," he adds. Beirnes sells only corn he grows in their fields.
The experience of an excellent season, albeit one with a sputtering start, holds for other major corn suppliers in the area such as Herrle's Country Farm Market in St. Agatha and Barrie's Asparagus in Cambridge.
Buying corn from such producers and cooking it at home is a routine and simple process — and a rite of passage for summer, I believe — but with excellent and plentiful corn available, local restaurants are also taking advantage are using the kernels and their juices in inventive ways and alongside some unique ingredients.
At The Bauer Kitchen, chef Graham Pelley calls himself "a corn guy" who remembers eating cobs at corn boils and pig roasts in July and August as the "essence" of summer.
"As a chef, I find it so versatile. It can be used in savoury applications and also in desserts. It can be smooth in a puree or crunchy as kernels," Pelley says.
Starting this week, Pelley and The Bauer Kitchen will be serving a seasonal and local corn pizza, the base of which is a rich sweet-corn Bechamel for grilled corn kernels from Strom's Farm and Bakery, Woolwich goat's cheese and a puree of black garlic from Gad's Hill, Ontario.
Rabbit, duck and beyond
If you travel to Paris, Ont., and Juniper Fine Dining Co., you will encounter a fresh, local corn dish with a protein that rarely finds its way onto menus in the area: rabbit.
Juniper chef and co-owner Andrea Legacey loves corn and takes advantage.
Her restaurant, inspired by Lyonnaise "bouchon," venues featuring rich and hearty meat dishes, has created a jalapeno creamed corn to be served with buttermilk-fried rabbit. "It's been a big hit," according to Legacey. "We add a little bit of double-smoked bacon to round it out."
In downtown Waterloo, it's corn two-ways.
Kyle Rennie, chef at King Street Trio, has created a dish of lavender duck and corn succotash — the latter usually made of corn and beans with its name having derived from the Narragansett Algonquin language of the original peoples of the American New England states.
"We serve it with sweet corn pudding," says Rennie. "We take the kernels off the cobs and juice them. They go into a double-boiler and the natural starch in the corn will thicken to a pudding consistency after a few hours."
At the Walper Hotel in downtown Kitchener, the sweet kernels help TWH Social Bar and Bistro chef Grant Holdbrook create a surf and turf dish and a couple of other corn comestibles.
He uses a sweet-corn cream for his pan-seared pickerel dish and adds corn-on-the-cob and corn bread to braised ribs. And when you order their herb-roasted and de-boned chicken, it's accompanied by succotash.
I've written recently here about the cultural exchange that you can find at area restaurants: here's another example with corn. At Mekong Brasserie in the Village Biergarten in St. Jacobs, chef Thompson Tran serves what he calls "a play on the classic American chicken and waffles," with a waffle batter that is a bit sweeter because of the corn and fried chicken that's more in the Japanese karaage style.
"We want to highlight, compliment and contrast each element on the plate," Thompson says. "And one way we do that is use whole pieces of local corn for pop and moisture and sweetness."
Kitchen hack for corn
Finally, I thought I'd include something of a kitchen hack for corn, to try at your summer's-end or tailgate party, courtesy of Freddy Hayes at The Crazy Canuck in Kitchener and near the St. Jacobs Market.
"You husk about 30 cobs of corn and put them in a large picnic drink cooler. Then you boil a big pot of very buttery and salty water and pour it into the cooler," Hayes says.
"Close the lid and you've got hot corn in 15 or so minutes," he adds. "It stays hot, and at the same time it's a great party trick."
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