Granted, there is something special about eating corn on the cob in the summertime. Shucking it, boiling it, and slathering it with salt and butter makes an ear of corn a pretty delicious treat. In fact, using less-than-stellar corn and going street-fair style with it, coating grilled ears with mayonnaise and giving them a good rub of aged cheese, is another example of the deliciousness of cooked corn. And yet, this time of year, sweet corn is just so incredibly good, that cooking it at all seems a waste of energy. A recent dinner out in Brooklyn yielded a summer salad of raw corn (off the cob, obviously), diced onions, Storm Ranch olive oil, and fresh herbs--an idea so simple and wonderful that I've had no qualms about just stealing it outright and serving it to friends at home. But even better, I've found, is corn risotto. Start by making any sort of risotto you'd like (in the summer, I like to puree some basil in the food processor, stirring it into the risotto at the same point where I grate my cheese, turning the whole thing a sort of Ecto Cooler-level of bright green). Right at the end, I fold raw corn kernels in, studding the risotto with the little yellow jewels (added benefit: because the corn has such a non-porous surface, it doesn't turn green in the basil puree risotto), just using the risotto's residual heat to warm the corn ever-so-slightly. Each bite pops with tiny, almost caviar-like reminders that it's summer.
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