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Sweet
on corn
Sept. 10, 2007
| If
You Go |
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Name:
Bob’s Supersweet Sweet Corn.
Location: At the corner of Birch Street and Wagner Avenue,
in the parking lot of Auto King, 2211 Birch St.
Owner/operator: Bob Bisek.
Selling corn on Birch Street: For more than 30 years.
Hours: About 2 to 6 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays; closed
Sundays.
Season ends: About Oct. 1.
Parking: On street or in the Auto King lot.
Prices: Sweet corn, $4 per dozen.
Extras: Tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, sweet peppers,
zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant and watermelon.
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On
Aug. 11 a friend sent us this e-mail:
“I assume you know that the best corn in the universe is sold
by Bob, one block east of the corner of Starr Avenue and Birch Street
from about 2 p.m. ’til about 6 p.m. MTWThFS.”
Minutes later we were in the car.
We easily found Bob’s dark-gray pickup on Birch Street in the
Auto King parking lot. The truck bed was full of corn with moist,
tight, bright-green husks. Many ears had silks darkened by water
from the recent heavy rains.
Bob was unloading fragrant cantaloupe and box tops full of fat tomatoes
from the front seat. He welcomed us with a smile, handed over a
grocery bag and gestured toward the corn.
Another customer said: “You won’t even need to check;
the corn is always good.”|
We bagged a dozen heavy ears, paid $4 and headed home to a favorite
late-summer meal: an excess of corn and a simple salad of tomatoes,
cucumbers and basil — toss with red wine vinegar and good olive
oil and pass pepper grinder.
Shucking on the back stoop, Audrey grazed a taut kernel with a sharp
fingernail and took a burst of cool fresh corn milk on the chin.
Bliss.
Boil or — better — steam the ears over high heat for 5
minutes.
Bob’s bicolored corn has big, plump kernels that cook up astonishingly
crisp, tender and juicy. And true to their modified “supersweet”
gene: amazingly sweet. We do prefer less-sweet varieties; too sweet
means it’s hard to taste the corn.
But we’re not complaining.
Sweet-seeker Audrey was happy adding just salted butter.
Jeff sought, ear after ear, to balance the sweetness. First with
black pepper. Next with chipotle pepper powder. And then with a
good shot of garlicky hot sauce.
Perfect.
Main Course, the Leader-Telegram's restaurant review
column, runs the fourth Sunday of the month. Diners' Notebook, a
sampling of favorite restaurant offerings, runs the second Tuesday
of the month.
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