Corn Soup

There are two things you need to know about this post:

#1: Matt Wynn is a talented young chef in St. Louis. He’s worked at Hearth, Craftbar, Craftsteak, Niche, and Sardella.  When he’s not cooking, he enjoys playing rugby and posting on Instagram.

#2: Every month or so, 33 Wine Bar hosts their Dorm Room Dinner series. A chef serves ~80 diners a meal prepared in a kitchen that really isn’t much of a kitchen, which is part of the fun. What can these cooks do with limited resources? It’s like Chopped, except you’re the judge, your opinion doesn’t really matter, and you’re paying for your meal.

At his recent Dorm Room Dinner, Matt whipped up a corn soup that put any I’ve made to shame. We bartered soup for photos.

Corn Soup

Chef Matt Wynn

YIELDS ROUGHLY 3 QUARTs

INGREDIENTS

15 corn cobs (slice off kernels)
4 sprigs rosemary
1 sprigs sage
15 black peppercorns
6 cloves garlic
2 onions, sliced thinly
1/2 lb Yukon Gold potatoes
Pinch of red chili flakes
1 lemon

METHOD

In a pot, add cobs, herbs (you can wrap them all together in cheesecloth), and cover with water. Cook this together for about 2 hours.  You will know it’s ready when the cobs start to become fleshy and pods that uses to host the kernels start to deteriorate.  Strain your soup using a fine mesh sieve.

In a separate pot, sweat your onions in olive oil.  Once translucent, add in your potatoes and corn.  Let that slowly cook down together.  Season your veggies at this stage.  You want the water to leech out from the onions and the kernels, while also allowing the potatoes to get rid of their starchy water content.  Salt is a catalyst to making this happen.  If you decide to use the red chili flakes, just remember that a little bit goes a very long way, especially at this stage of the soup.  The capsaicin also helps leech out moisture from your veggies.

In Matt’s case, once he gets impatient enough or paranoid that this base will burn, he adds it to the strained corn stock.  A more rational approach would be the phase when your onions and corn turn to mush and your potatoes get whiter.

Cook the veggies and the stock together for about an hour, stirring occasionally.  If you want, add in a quart of cream.  Once your potatoes get mushy, that’s your cue to take it off the heat.

Now comes the not-so-fun part: buzzing and straining.  If you have access to an immersion blender, I would highly suggest buzzing your soup.  This makes the next phase easier, which is blending it in a blender. You could also just blend it all in the Vitamix in batches.  Buzz it and pass it though a fine mesh sieve.  Salt to taste, then chill.

Once your soup is ready to serve, add a hit of lemon juice to boost the acid, but only before serving.  If it lingers too long, then your soup will start to get slightly sour.

Garnish:  creme fraiche, Aleppo pepper, basil oil, fresh mint, puffed grains, and if you have access to pretty edible flowers, use them! Or you can do nothing. YOLO.

Mai Lee's Bun Bo Hue

For some time now, I have been attempting to do the impossible: eat every single item on Mai Lee's menu. That's 202 menu items, plus the Chinese menu. I've had a fair amount, but I'm still nowhere near done. At the current pace I'm going, I should finish when I'm 35. I have two favorite dishes at Mai Lee, and the weather dictates which I'm ordering any given day.

Warm days call for the crepes (#54) filled with pork, shrimp, and bean sprouts. Cooler days require a big bowl of #17, bun bo hue (boon bo hway). What is this mysterious soup and why you should stray from your usual bowl of pho? Think of it like this: pho is Vietnamese soup on Rookie mode, bun bo hue is when you turn it up to Pro. The anchovy based bun nuoc leo, #21, is dialed all the way to All Star. I haven't even gotten there yet.

The way I've been getting through the menu is by letting Qui pick for me. A few months back, we were going through the menu and he was naming dishes he was sure I'd tried, and when he said #17, I was all like, "I have not tried that."

And he was all, "What?"

And I was like, "Yeah. No idea what that is."

He disappeared to the kitchen and returned shortly with a bowl that smelled like Christmas (in Southeast Asia). The light beef broth is heavily scented with lemongrass, the smell and taste I equate most with SEA eating, but is complimented by the wintry mix of cinnamon, cloves, and star anise. Oh, and annatto seed and fresh pineapple, as well. Add the fire of chilies and tender slices of meat to that, and you've got yourself one of the finest bowls of soup that you'll ever eat. You've also got a pantry worth of ingredients, liquified.

If you don't eat beef, you can request a chicken version instead. I'm guess Qui's team can even pull together a vegetarian option (but I can't promise anything).

I hate to say it, but I don't think I'll be going back to pho any time soon.