Oh, happy days!! Sweet corn is in season and BSK has the source for the best ever. Every morning, in a shopping center parking lot in the town of Montague, Blum Farms parks a pick up truck laden with freshly picked corn. BSK makes a well-worth-it 20 minute drive from HG/BSK’s Prince Edward Island oceanfront home to grab a dozen or more ears before it all sells off (as it typically does by noon). The corn is sublime: yellow niblets so fresh that each kernel seems to explode with flavor and the sweetness of sugars that haven’t even dreamed of turning to starch. HG/BSK (plus family visitors) eat many ears slathered with butter and sea salt. Extra cooked ears are refrigerated and are used for many dishes including BSK’s sublime corn and clam chowder. Here’s how BSK does it: Lean bacon goes into a sauce pan and before it crisps chopped onions and diced potatoes are added. Salt and Aleppo pepper go into the the sauté as well as a splash of olive oil (if the bacon is very lean). Little neck clams are steamed in clam broth (the clam juice adds potency to the broth). Clams are removed when just barely open. Plucked out of the shells, they are cut in half (if using larger, tougher clams, BSK gives them a sturdy chop). The clam broth and a half cup of whole milk is poured into the deep sauce pan over the bacon-onion-potato mix and simmered until the mineral rich PEI spuds begin to soften. Some chopped thyme adds a nice herbal touch. Clams go into the pan with corn kernels from five ears of corn. When all is heated through the chowder is given a dusting of smoked Spanish paprika or Aleppo pepper (this is optional–favored by HG who likes spicy heat). The dish is a nice fusion of farm and sea, a good metaphor for Prince Edward Island itself.
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