Basil Butter

Sometimes it’s the simplest recipes that add the most pizazz to a meal. Take basil butter: made from just five ingredients with nothing more than a food processor or by hand with a bowl and wooden spoon, this flavored butter is a great way to add depth and color to vegetables, pasta, fish or chicken.

I made basil butter for a family get-together where we served it alongside fresh corn. The leftover butter came home with me, which I rolled into a log surrounded by parchment paper and froze, making it ideal for cutting off small pieces when needed. A few days later I pulled the log out of the freezer, cut off a tablespoon-sized round and added it to my penne pasta with corn and zucchini for a finishing touch and burst of flavor.

Basil Butter Penne with Corn & Zucchini

The basil butter can be stored three days in the refrigerator or a few months in the freezer and can be used as both a flavored spread and as a sauce.

Here’s the recipe:

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Caramelized Corn

Twitter is changing the world. Okay, that may be a bit extreme but it is making an impact in many ways, not the least of which is with my cooking repertoire.

People tweet all sorts of things: breaking news, shopping tips, when they last showered, and sometimes recipes. It takes skill to tweet a recipe, or “twecipe” as it’s called, because there’s a lot of detail to convey in just 140 characters, but count on Martha Stewart to have mastered that talent.

On July 27th @MarthaStewart tweeted the recipe for caramelized corn: “into pan 1T butter + 3C corn kernels + 4 sliced shallots + 1/4t sugar s+p ~ cook + stir until corn light brown + 2T fresh thyme.”

The recipe seemed simple enough to follow and, quite frankly, the ingredients made my mouth water. I was so excited about the caramelized corn that I made it a few days later and it was fabulous! The only problem was that this happened to be at the height of my camera crisis and the photos were ridiculously blurry.

Well, I figured I’d just have to make it again. And trust me, no tears were shed over this hardship.

A week later I was set to make caramelized corn again, but by now I’d had plenty of time to analyze the recipe and decided to make a few additions. The main change was to add bacon, just one piece which would be enough to add a subtle smokey flavor without completely changing the flavor profile of the dish. The other addition was fingerling potatoes, mainly because I’d just bought a bag of them at the farmer’s market and I thought they’d add a nice texture contrast.

Happily enough the second try of caramelized corn was even better than the first, although this version was a bit more challenging in a Tweet: “Caramelized corn: 1pc dcd bacon render. 3 slcd shallots+1C slcd taters bacon fat+1T butter. +kernels 4 ears+1 1/2t dr thyme+3/4t sugar +s&p.”

In case that was a bit too confusing, here’s the full recipe:

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