Roasted Corn on the Cob à la Nero Wolfe

Not all private eyes live out of their office and consume bath-tub hooch from paper bags. There is a well documented association of detectives with good food and fine vintages. This even includes those who, though hot on the trail, have put down their magnifying glass in preference to taking up the skillet. In the former category: Lord Peter Wimsey, Miss Jane Marple and Nick and Nora Charles, seem to me to top the list. In the latter, there are the fastidious gourmets and hands-on chefs: Hercule Poirot, Perry Mason and of course by far the epitome of epicurean detectives; Rex Stout's amazing creation, Nero Wolfe.

Nero Wolfe's delicious roasted sweet corn recipe
Detective fiction recipes
Left a still from 'The Case of the Curious Bride', filmed in 1935 and starring the wonderful Warren William as Perry Mason. The establishment shots have Perry and the Coroner choosing crabs for crabe à la bordelaise which later, due to a deficit in the wine cellar, turns into à la chablisienne. I will hopefully be making this recipe too but in the meantime there's  E.F. Benson's  crabe à la Riseholme

Detective fiction and fine dining
With the arrival of the title character and the machinations of crime, Perry and his friends finish their gourmet meal with café royale a variation of Parisienne or French Coffee, probably with Bourbon or Cognac, in the morgue!

Rex Stout, however with Nero Wolfe, took the gastronome sleuth to a whole new level and with each case playing out against a background of cordon bleu meals and vociferous arguments with his chef Fritz. One case in particular; 'Murder is Corny' hinges upon Wolfe's fine understanding of the optimum time for harvesting sweet corn. This is reminiscent of an earlier confrere, Mr Sherlock Holmes who remarked in 'The Adventure of the Six Napoleons' :
"You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day."
Like Holmes, Wolfe is a person of incredible self-belief, he will brook no argument as to his ability and opinions, his recipes, 40 minute scrambled eggs included, demand a similar blind faith from the reader too.
Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef's ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish.”
 
Nevertheless, the first time I ever made this recipe I was very happy to be using sweet corn which was free, gratis and for nothing from the box of debris I get from  my local organic shop. The reason for ambrosia ending up in the trash being, that in rural France, people don't really go for sweet corn on the husk. Two decades ago when I inadvertently mentioned another roasted favourite of ours,  I was told unceremoniously that: 'parsnips are for pigs'. Similarly a great percentage of maize grown in this country is processed in situ at harvest, with the whole plant finely chopped up and carried off to be made into silage. Times change however and not only are parsnips now sold at our organic shop and people buy and eat them but French friends even recommend them to me.

Nero Wolfe's roasted sweet corn recipe

Last year, when I was first considering making Wolfe's corn recipe, I was thinking that at that high a temperature, if I ended up with burnt corn, at least we would not be  out of pocket. I should have known though that Nero Wolfe was right, after all, in his books Rex Stout has him constantly reminding us of the fact. Like Holmes with his parsley, Wolfe understood the science involved, in that the corn had to be exactly at the correct level of moisture on picking so as to roast and steam to perfection. Ambrosia was/is the right description for this dish of roasted corn. Sadly though when I went back to the shop, there was no corn to be had, the season being so short. So I've had to wait until this year to make it again. Even so there were only 10 ears on offer and I bagged 2, which at Euros 1.40 a piece is not surprising.

Nero Wolfe's roasted sweet corn recipe organic

I cooked mine at 230°C - 450°F although I have read of others going up to 550°F - 290°C! However, I find that the former temperature works well and anyway we have a woodcooker and hand-saw our wood so there's no point in making more work than is needed. After 40 minutes you just follow Wolfe's advice, add butter and sink your teeth into..ambrosia.

Roasted sweet corn recipe from Nero Wolfe

From the image above I deduce that two people have just eaten Nero Wolfe's delicious roasted corn.



Nero Wolfe's roasted sweet corn recipe
If you've enjoyed this recipe and would like to comment and/or share it on social media, please feel free to do so. I would also like to hear from anyone who also has an interest in cooking recipes from literature and films.

I hope you will join me here again for another recipe from an old farm house in Normandie in the meantime all the very best,

Sue

RELATED RECIPES 

Crabe à la Riseholme - Spider crabs in a rich cream sauce

Lobster à la Riseholme, the secret  recipe, ostensibly obtained by E.F. Benson's Lucia's Aunt in Normandie. I'm an Aunt in Normandie...read more
 

©  Sue Cross 2019

2 comments:

  1. So I cooked this last night for dinner. I've always been a big Nero Wolfe fan so this recipe intrigued me with it's simplicity. I cooked the corn in the husk at 450 F for 40 minutes and then shucked it and slathered it with butter.

    I have to say that it just didn't taste that much different from boiling it. It would be interesting to do an A/B comparison but even then 2 different ears can vary tremendously in sweetness. Certainly it had been much more than 3 hours since it was picked more like 3 days minimum so that may have a big effect on taste and certainly the growing and propagating methods have come a long way since Stout's day.

    Overall I'll do it again but I wish there'd been a bigger payoff.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for such an astute comment, it gets to the root of what good food is really all about and that is not just the nutrient value that changes and diminishes but the difference in taste between fresh and 'not-so-fresh'. Added to that is also the variety of corn and how it is grown, so for me the first consideration is that it should be organic and hopefully one of the heritage varieties. This year I finally got around to growing my own, I did that before I found the recipe but this time I'm going, mice willing, to have both the corn and Nero Wolfe's genius.

      BTW have you ever tried the 40 minute scrambled egg? I have my own organically-raised, food forest-dwelling chickens, so have possibly even better basic ingredients than in Nero Wolfe day - I still haven't dared to try it though!

      Please do let me know how your experiment works out and I will let you know how mine shapes up in return. Thanks again for sharing your experience of this recipe, feedback is always so welcome!

      All the very best, Sue xx

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