We are in the waning days of sweet corn season, so it’s time to make the most of this delicious food.  Tonight’s blog is about a lunch I made two days ago, featuring something called “Corn Butter” and some sympatico companions in our larder (can vegans use that word?) .

I must tell you that I frequently get ideas from a great food blog: Food52.  As I looked over their page that day, I saw Yotam Ottolenghi’s Sweet Corn Polenta with Eggplant Sauce, and it struck a chord for me.  We had just bought 6 ears of corn from a local farmer, and they were great.  Since I had just made polenta last week, I explored a little further and found another Food52 recipe, one for Creamless Creamed Corn.  Finally, reading through that, I found reference to Whitney Chen’s Amazing One-Ingredient Corn “Butter”.  So we bought more corn and made this cornerstone dish.

Back to lunch on Saturday: Using the corn butter as a foundation, I pulled out the remaining ingredients I wanted to work with:

• fresh beet greens from a bunch of beets I bought at the farmer’s market that morning
• fresh sweet red pepper that I had cut into strips and sauteed slowly in olive oil, finished with a bit of red wine vinegar boiled off at the end
• a couple of slices of my homemade whole wheat Tartine bread
• leftover Moroccan eggplant jam which Aaron had made from a Paula Wolfert recipe

First, I grilled the bread in a ridged pan on a hot stove.  Next, I wilted the beet greens in a bit of the olive oil left in the pan from the peppers.  After spreading the corn butter on the bread, I topped it with various combinations of those toppings, poured a glass of Masseria Li Veli Verdeca, and ate heartily.