Home › Vegetables › Stewed Tomatoes and Corn
Stewed Tomatoes and Corn
Stew and strain nice ripe tomatoes, and to each 2 cupfuls of tomato add 1 cupful of tender green corn, cut from the cob. Season with salt, pepper, and butter. Cook them together eight or ten minutes, then add boiling hot cream, 1/2 cupful to each 3 cupfuls of tomato and corn, and serve very hot; or the corn may be omitted and the tomatoes stewed in the regular way. When done, add 3 beaten eggs; stew a few minutes longer, until the eggs set.
A simple late-summer stew that depends entirely on the corn being young. Two dishes are described here: tomatoes with corn finished in cream, and a plainer stewed tomato thickened with egg.
- Straining the tomatoes"Stew and strain" means cooking the tomatoes down until soft, then pushing them through a sieve to leave skins and seeds behind. About 2 lb of ripe tomatoes yields roughly the 2 cupfuls of pulp called for.
- Corn quality is the hinge"Tender green corn" means immature sweet corn, milky when a kernel is pressed. Older corn or frozen kernels will stay starchy and tough in the eight to ten minutes given; if the corn is not young, cook it separately until tender before combining.
- Cutting from the cobCut the kernels off; many cooks also scrape the cob with the back of the knife to release the milky liquid, which adds body and sweetness. The recipe itself says only "cut from the cob."
- Heat the cream firstThe instruction to add cream "boiling hot" is not decoration. Cold cream dropped into acidic tomato is far more likely to curdle. Scald it separately and stir it in off a hard boil, then serve immediately rather than holding the pan over heat.
- The egg variantFor the second version, temper the beaten eggs with a ladle of the hot tomato before returning them to the pan, and keep the heat low. Left at a boil the eggs will scramble into hard threads instead of setting into a smooth thickening.
- SeasoningButter here works against the acidity; the recipe gives no quantity, so add to taste. A pinch of sugar is one way to correct sharp tomatoes.
- YieldAs written the corn version makes roughly 3 1/2 cups, enough for four as a side dish.