The American Beauty - sweet corn and red quinoa soup

Corn, quinoa, and potato all things from in calm broth, truly beautiful, truly sweet, and truly American, I think.

I was blessed with few ears of beautiful sweet corn. I know in English writing, same word should not be used too often. But what can I say? They are glorious, gorgeous, and beautiful.

I felt always guilty whenever I threw away sweet corncobs. They are still sweet but does not make good compost. So, it went to waist bin. One day, I came up with an idea. It looked like bone of corn, so why didn't I treat them as chicken or any other bone?

So, I cut off all the lovely sweet yellow corn, and drop the corncobs into the sauce pan. Add cold water, and brew it for a while with bruised garlic. Water turned into broth with sweet and lovely milky hue. Took them out and threw them away, feeling less guilty but still apologizing that I couldn't give proper burial.

Added potato and corn and quinoa, and drop of good Spanish extra virgin olive oil on top. Mixed in little bit of dried chili and ground cumin seed. Green onion for its sharp but not over powering onionness. Lime and cilantro were dearly missed.

That day, I discovered all things America. (Not United states, but the continent of America)

recipe:

1/2 cup of red quinoa, 3 medium size potato, 2 ears of sweet corn, 3 green onions, 1 garlic clove, fresh cilantro (up to your liking), 4 cups of water, dried oregano 1/2 t, crushed red chili, salt and pepper up to taste, zest and juice of half lime, good extra virgin Olive oil,

1. Cut off corn from the corncob, set a side corn. Do not milk the corncob.

2. Peel and dice potato into bite size pieces. Submerge them in cold water.

2. pour 4 cups of cold water in to good size sauce pan. drop corncob alone with tough part of cilantro, bruised garlic (whole) and put it on low heat. Brew about 30 min.

3. Take out corncob, garlic, and cilantro stems. Add potato, salt, chili, pepper, ground cumin, dried oregano and cook till potato is almost cooked.

4. Add lime zest, quinoa and sweet corn. cook till quinoa is fully cooked.

5. Take off from heat. Add lime juice, half of chopped cilantro and all of green onion. Put the lid back and let it sit for 5 min.

6. Serve with lime wage, olive oil and remaining chopped fresh cilantro.

This soup is good either cold, warm, or room temperature.

Adding chopped tomato is also a good option.

And of course, you can just grill sweet corn.

If you have good sweet corn in its beautiful husk, here is a suggestion.

Remove thread, and sock the corn in cold water for thirty miniut. tare off little bit of the corn husk and tie the end with it. Grill it as it is on the grill about 30-35 min, turning them once around 15 min point or so.

grilling corn in its husk enhances the corn taste, and of course, the corns are beautiful to look at.

Aren't they? :)