So I was all ready to hop into the shower the other night (this is code for “I was buck naked”) when the phone rang. My child answered it and thoughtfully ran it right up to me, disregarding the obvious signs that I was otherwise occupied. I took the call because, really, I can talk on the phone without clothes just as well as with.

Is this too much information?

Anyhow, the call was really important. It was about corn. My friend had just made it for supper and she was very clear in her message: my life would be much enhanced if I made the corn. A bonus: it was Indian style.

I hung up the phone, got my shower, cozied up in my bed to write, and …. the phone rang again. It was my friend with more observations about the corn recipe. She was spooning the juices into her mouth as she talked, describing to me the play-by-play details. I hung up the phone again and then ran downstairs to 1) return the phone to its rightful place in the kitchen, and 2) fetch the appropriate cookbook.

Back up in bed, between writing about plum cake and editing photos, I read the recipe. It did look good, I had to admit.

Fast forward to today. A bucket of unhusked corn from yesterday’s pathetic picking lurked in the back hall, so I sent Miss Beccaboo and our newly arrived Fresh Air boy out to the compost to husk it for me. (The boy returned to the porch early—he’s a little shell-shocked, understandably.) Then, a little later, after running errands and slapping together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids’ lunch, I set the children up in front of the computer to watch School House Rock while I made my lunch, the spicy Indian corn.

I ate a bowl right off (and scorched the roof of my mouth in my haste) and then I rushed the kids off to rest time so I could sit myself down and tell you about it. And eat a second bowl.

It’s good stuff, my dears—spicy, sweet, creamy, crunchy. (Aren’t I good with adjectives? I think I have a real gift.) If you don’t have a blog platform from which to vent your corny ecstacy, I suspect you’ll want to call up a couple good friends who will listen patiently as you recount the delicious details. You’ll be so absorbed in describing the fireworks that are going off in your mouth you won’t even care if the person on the other end of the line has any clothes on or not.

And that’s a fact.

Indian-Style Corn
Adapted from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon

This would be delicious served with fried or grilled chicken and a spinach salad (or in winter, creamed spinach).

5 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons black mustard seeds
½ teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon fresh minced ginger
2 medium onions, peeled, cut in half and thinly sliced
1 (or 4, if you dare) jalapeno peppers, seeded and minced
½ cup sweet pepper (red, green, or orange), small dice
½ teaspoon turmeric
2 cloves garlic, minced
5 cups fresh, uncooked corn, cut off the cob
1 1/4 cups plain yogurt
½ teaspoon salt
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

Melt the butter in a large saucepan on medium-high heat. Once the butter is melted, toss in the mustard seeds and stir for 15 seconds. Add the fenugreek, red pepper, and ginger. Stir once and add the onions, jalapenos, and sweet peppers. Saute till the vegetables are tender but not browned, about 8 minutes. Add the turmeric and stir once.

Reduce the heat to medium and add the corn and garlic. Cook for about five minutes or until the corn is tender, stirring frequently. Add the yogurt and salt and heat through. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cilantro. Serve warm.

Yield: six servings

This same time, years previous: garden tsunami, seasonal regret, and hamming up Luke.

I’m obsessed with discovering The Perfect Way to serve each fruit that comes into season. It’s ongoing, this obsession of mine. I experiment and tweak, toss, and research. My goal is to have The Perfect Way (or two or three) all figured out for when each fruit hits its peak. That way I’ll be prepared to get the most bang for my buck. Or flavor for my fruit.

I’ve got tomatoes down pat: they belong, completely and totally, in bread pudding. Think it sounds old-fashioned and stodgy? Well, it’s not. With roasted tomatoes and bread cubes and garlic, eggs and cream and Fontina, it’s anything but. In fact, I dare you—no, I double-dog dare you—to make it and tell me I’m wrong.

Other tomato favorites include Oven-Roasted Tomatoes and Valerie’s Salsa, and then there’s a salad I haven’t told you about yet. I’ll get to it, promise. But maybe not till next year. Now don’t panic! If it’s truly good it will stand the test of time. You wouldn’t want to know about it if it didn’t, right?

For nectarines, there’s this tart. I made it with peaches, but I really think it’s best with nectarines—prettier and more flavorful.

Sweet cherries belong in this ice cream. Don’t argue with me about this.

Strawberries go in this pie and in this salad, sour cherries in this crumble, apricots in this cake, rhubarb in this cake, and red raspberries in this pie (or this cake).

Then come plums. I’m still working on them—they don’t frequent my kitchen all that often—but I found a cake that I think might fit the bill.

The recipe comes from Deb. I’ve learned to trust her recipes, and if her recipe, heaven forbid, isn’t exactly right, then there are boatloads of comments that add suggestions and tweaks. Her blog is A Most Excellent Resource.

Anyway, this plum cake came from her. At first I thought it was too simple, nothing outstanding or flashy about it. In fact, Mr. Handsome, bless his dear, ogrish heart, took one bite and said, “It has no flavor.”

“Pooh on you,” I retorted.

But then after a couple pieces he was forced to amend (with no coercion on my part) his earlier statement. “It’s actually pretty good,” he murmured. (And just so you know, the cake has plenty of flavor, in a gentle sort of way.)

As for the kids, they fell on it like piranas (or like their mother had been feeding them weird Indian food all week), and the whole cake disappeared in a flash. So maybe it is flashy after all.

The cake consists of a simple cake batter topped with slices of juicy plum and then sprinkled with a crumb topping. The bottom part tasted part-cake, part-cookie, the fruit was juicy-sweet (and gorgeous, to boot), and the crumb topping was just what crumb toppings are supposed to be—crumbly. You can leave the topping off, if you like, but I liked the additional rich, sugary crunch. You know me.

By the way, fruits that are still haven’t made it into The Perfect Way category include peaches (believe it or not) and blueberries (though I have several strong contenders), so if you have any good leads, please pass them on. I’m on a mission.

Dimply Plum Cake
Adapted from Deb at Smitten Kitchen

5 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil
zest of 1 orange
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
1 ½ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
4-8 juicy plums, depending on size, halved (and sliced, if large) and pitted
crumb topping (see below for recipe), optional
whipped cream, for serving, optional

Cream together the butter and brown sugar. Add the eggs and beat well. Beat in the oil, zest, and vanilla.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.

Gently beat the dry ingredients into the wet.

Pour the batter into a greased, square 9-inch pan. Arrange the plum halves/slices on top of the batter, cut-side facing up. Sprinkle with the crumb topping and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes.

Serve warm or at room temperature (with whipped cream and coffee).

Crumb Topping
From Mennonite Country-Style Recipes by Esther H. Shank

A jar of these crumbs were just hanging out in the freezer, waiting to sprinkled. I keep these on hand for crumb pies or the crumb topping for muffins, though truth be told, I don’t make crumb-topped muffins all that often. This recipe will make enough topping for 4 or 5 pies.

3 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 ½ sticks (3/4 cup) butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon, optional

Using your fingers, mix all the ingredients together till sandy-crumbly. Store in jars in the freezer.

This same time, years previous: I’m back and Tomato Bread Pudding

Two nights in a row now, Mr. Handsome and I have been playing tag team. This means that after the supper rush and clean up, I tuck my computer under my arm and hightail it upstairs. First I get shower (make it cold, please) and then I snuggle up in my bed, a mound of pillows behind my back, and get all set to write—except that I procrastinate first. It’s a bad habit. It’s gotten so that I have to procrastinate before I write, kind of like how athletes have to spit on their hands, cross themselves, and tug at their shirt collars before doing whatever it is they do. I don’t spit, cross, or tug—I click and read. But after ten frittering minutes, I’m done, ready to get busy.

Aaaand here I am. Good evening!

I know it’s kind of bad manners to complain about the weather, but because it’s on the forefront of my mind, I’m going to anyway. Yesterday when I went running, I was in a cloud, and not no happiness cloud, neither. It was the real deal cloud—heavy, dark, thick, soggy. The roadside grass was draped with moisture-laden, silvery spider webs like some giantess had scattered a hundred thousand tissues, and the trees plink-plunked water down on my sweaty head. It brought to mind that desert in Peru and how the fog rolls in from the sea and moisture condenses on the cactus and spider webs and the animals go around licking up the droplets and acting like they hit payday. But here in Virginia we don’t lick leaves. Maybe in a couple hundred centuries we’ll evolve into tree-lickers, but not just yet.

Then this afternoon a thunderstorm rumbled to the south-west of us and hovered just over the ridge for a whole, freakin’ two hours. We got wind, we got cool air, we got rain-smell up our parched nostrils, but nothing happened, except that my laundry dried.

In a valiant (but vain) attempt to ignore the rain-laden clouds and rumbling thunder, I made kale chips.

In case you didn’t know, they are all the rage. To make them, just tear some washed, and then dried, kale leaves into pieces, toss them with canola oil, sprinkle with salt, and bake in a 350 oven for about ten minutes. The resulting “chips” were light, crispy, oily, salty, and bitter. The kids spit them out. Mr. Handsome didn’t spit, but he quit after one and doggedly refused to try a second. I ate a bunch, just to make certain I for-sure didn’t like them, but then I gave up pretending to be kale-chip cool and turned the remaining bits over to the chickens.

And then I turned my attention to a salad. A kick-butt salad, if I do say so myself.

In fact, I want to serve this salad at my wedding.

Except I’m already married and have zero plans to change the status quo, so in that case, I’ll have to serve the salad at Miss Beccaboo’s or Sweetsie’s wedding.

That’s right, my girls are just nine and six respectively, and I’m already marrying them off for the sake of some salad. It’s that good.

I’ll admit the ingredient list didn’t make me super confident, mostly because I didn’t know what Asian sweet chili sauce was. The ancient jar of sweet chili sauce that was lounging in my refrigerator door was totally devoid of any Asian characteristics whatsoever, but I decided to give it a go anyhow. A bunch of minced ginger, several tablespoons of rice vinegar, a shake of salt and grind of pepper, and the dressing was done. My case of the queasy qualms was not squelched.

But then, then I peeled, sliced, and drizzled and the resulting assemblage was so lovely that I got goosebumps just looking at it. And each jazzy fork full? Oh my. It was the Hallelujah Chorus and La Macarena combined! (That’s not sacrilegious, is it?) Spicy-sweet, meaty, fruity, smooth, crunchy…delicious in the most fashionable way possible.

I’m gushing, aren’t I. Sorry.

I’ll just say this yet: after eating my salad, I hopped up to make a fresh plate for the camera, which Mr. Handsome and I then split in half, wolfed down, and that was that.

The floodgates are now officially closed. Goodnight.

Shrimp, Mango, and Avocado Salad
Adapted (mostly because I don’t want to type out the rest of the title which would be “with Sweet Chili-Ginger Vinaigrette” even though that probably makes the salad sound more unctuous, but really, leaving out part of the title doesn’t make it any less tasty, just so you know) from the August 2010 issue of Bon Appetit

I only used about half of the dressing, so either save the leftovers for another salad, or double the other ingredients, or just chuck it.

My shrimp were frozen, unpeeled, and raw. To bring them up to speed, I half-thawed them under some cold water, heated a pot of water to boiling, tossed in the unpeeled shrimp for three minutes, scooped them into some ice water, peeled them, and that was it.

½ cup Asian sweet chili sauce (perhaps something like this?)
2-3 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar
1 ample tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
pinch of salt
grind of black pepper
8 ounces cooked, peeled shrimp (the equivalent of 12 large shrimpies)
5 ounces of mixed greens
1 juicy mango, peeled and sliced
1 avocado, peeled, pitted, and sliced

Whisk together the first five ingredients. Toss three tablespoons of the dressing with the shrimp and set aside.

Makes either 4 side servings or 2 main course servings. To assemble, set out however many plates you’re using and divide the ingredients between them—first the greens, then the avocado and mango slices, then the saucy shrimp. Lightly drizzle some of the remaining dressing over the salads (a little goes a long way, so exercise restraint).

This same time, years previous: Experimenting (and suffering for it) and Summertime Pizza