Corn and Crab Soup

Memorial Day... 3, Father's Day ... 23..., Fourth of July...42

It is Corn and Crab Soup Day. That combination has been around in Chinese restaurants for who knows how long, in the usual thin style common to most Asian soups. But that's not the soup the name conjures up around New Orleans. A rich, spicy potage came to light during Paul Prudhomme's tour of duty as chef at Commander's Palace, in the late 1970s. That soup had the two namesake ingredients in a matrix of reduced heavy cream and crab stock, with a good shake of cayenne pepper to make it convincing.What makes a corn and crab soup great is the size of the crab lumps, the richness of the broth, and the freshness of the corn. The best versions involve corn cut freshly off the cob, with the corn milk collected and added to the broth. Sometimes a stock is even made from the corn cobs, and that's good, too. It's really simple to make--if you have any instincts at all, you already know how to make it from just what I've already told you here.Corn and crab soup (also called bisque by some purveyors) quickly became part of the pantheon of classic New Orleans soups, right up there with gumbo, turtle soup, and oyster-artichoke. Some restaurants have become famous for it, notably Vincent's (where they serve it in a bowl made of French bread), most of the Brennan restaurants, and even Copeland's.

The Patent Act of 1930 made it possible for plants to be patented. This gave the seed companies a tremendous boost, largely at the expense of the individual farmer and the consumer. If a seed company developed a new corn hybrid, for example, it could now forbid farmers from just replanting the corn using the kernels from last year's crop. Although this was seen as a boon to the creation of new, much more productive hybrids, it also had the unintended effect of narrowing the gene pool for corn. The jury is still out on this one, but it's highly questionable whether in the long run this will prove to have been a good thing for anyone but the three gigantic companies that control corn.

Sassafras is a rural crossroads in extreme southern Indiana, fifty-nine miles west of Louisville, Kentucky. It's a mix of wooded areas and farm fields. A number of small lakes formed on the streams around there suggest fish farms. Interstate 64 runs just north, and that's where the nearest place to eat is: nine miles west, at Deb's Truck Stop.

Crabs don't eat corn
And corn's not for crabs
But when the cob's shorn
And lump's up for grabs
Put cream in the pot
And simmer it down
Add cayenne--not a lot
Then just go to town.

coriander, n.--A member of the parsley family, whose leaves have a distinctly sharper flavor than other parsleys. References to coriander on menus or in spice jars almost always mean the seeds of that plant, which have a thin, aromatic sharpness that sets off many other flavors without jumping into the foreground, even if you use a lot of it. The plant's leaves themselves are most often called by their Spanish name, cilantro, which tastes very different from the seeds. Few people who hate cilantro (and there are many of those) find anything objectionable in coriander.

Before ordering chowder in any restaurant, demand to know everything in it, and what color it is. And ask this: Not canned, right? Watch the server's eyes when you ask this.

One of the worst songs ever to top the music charts did so on this day in 1968. It was the outer limits of bubblegum music: Yummy Yummy Yummy, by the Ohio Express.

Seabiscuit, the famous racehorse, was born today in 1933. . . Early baseball pro Zack Wheat was born today in 1888.

"I wish I had time for just one more bowl of chili."--Kit Carson, a cowboy who, according to legend, spoke these words with his dying breath on this date in 1868.

There's alcohol in plant and tree.
It must be Nature's plan
That there should be in fair degree
Some alcohol in Man. --A. P. Herbert, British humorist.