The thrill of discovery

Last week I wrote about how I failed my fresh produce. You may have wondered what ever became of those two sad, tired ears of corn. The notion of making elotes had swirled around in my head, but these cobs were too far gone for that to happen.

My next thought was soup. For ages, cooks have been throwing past-their-prime vegetables into a pot of water to wring the last bit of good out of them. Then the lightning bolt struck – why couldn’t I have both? I quickly turned to the EYB Library for assistance.

I did not find much when I searched for ‘elote’ and filtered to soup. I realized I was being too specific so searched instead for ‘Mexican street corn soup’ which yielded a couple of results, but not the bounty I thought I might find. To widen the net, I changed the search to ‘corn chile powder lime’ and filtered to soups. Now I had too many options! I quickly added filters to exclude meat and seafood. Now I was down to 38 results, a manageable number to browse.

The winning recipe ended up being Smitten Kitchen’s Corn chowder with chile, lime and cotija, pictured above. I tweaked the recipe a bit, adding a tip I learned years ago from Cook’s Illustrated on how to get extra flavor into a corn chowder. After I cut off the kernels, I halved the cobs and added them to a small saucepan. I simmered them in vegetable broth for several minutes prior to starting the soup. Now I have a great lunch for tomorrow, and the corn did not go to waste. EYB FTW!