Only Snobs Hate This Soup
I have a secret: I love canned creamed corn. It’s sweet and thick and porridge-like, and it also is a key ingredient in Jiffy corn casserole (another love of mine).
Is it as good as our Creamed Corn with Scallions? Of course not. That side dish is buttery, silky, grassy-sweet perfection, without the need for any actual cream. It’s the creamed corn to make when company is coming. But the canned stuff does scratch a certain itch.
So imagine my surprise (and delight) when I saw our recipe for Chili Crisp Chicken and Corn Soup, which gets sweetness and body from—you guessed it—a humble can of creamed corn. We learned about it from James Ooi—founder of Little Bao Boy, an Asian street food business based in Leeds, England.
It requires half a dozen ingredients and no knife work except the slicing of scallions for garnish. All you have to do is poach bone-in chicken breasts in water with a little soy sauce, shred the chicken, then return it to the pot with a couple of cans of creamed corn and a little corn starch. A drizzle of chili oil is the perfect finishing touch. Don’t try to swap out the can of corn for something homemade; it is sweetened and thickened with starch, which are important for the flavor and consistency of the soup. (In the words of Chris Kimball, “Don’t be a snob!”)
I know we technically have a few more weeks of summer, but I’m over the sun and the heat. I’m ready for soup (like the one above), but I’m also ready to roast, braise and bake.
The first thing I’ll use my oven for when it finally cools down is Brown Butter-Cardamom Banana Bread, because I have an overwhelming amount of bananas in my freezer, and I want my home to smell of browned butter and cardamom. (Blooming the spice in hot butter intensified the flavor and aroma.) I also love the thin, shiny crust created by sprinkling granulated sugar on top just before baking.
And I’m excited to tackle bigger baking projects, especially those that teach me a new skill. I’m not very good at shaping dough, so I’ll probably attempt our recipe for Swedish kardemummabullar, a soft, rich yeasted bun with an aromatic butter, sugar and cardamom filling.
On the savory side, I’ve been dying to make our Neapolitan Salami-Provolone Buns ever since I started working here almost two years ago. It’s a yeasted bun with Italian grinder flavors—some of my favorite flavors—and the recipe requires only 35 minutes of active time. It’s shameful that I have yet to make them.
But I do have one warm weather recipe I need to make before the season ends: our Burmese Tomato Salad with Shallots and Peanuts, a take on Myanmar tomato salad khayan jin thee thoke. It’s packed with surprising textures and flavor pops: chilies, crunchy peanuts, crispy shallots, and a balance of umami-rich fish sauce and zingy lime juice—the perfect vehicle for the last few baskets of tomatoes from my garden.
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Claire Lower
Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.
