Pasta with corn, tomato & cheese

My friend Peter is what you might call "an acquired taste."

He is brash, opinionated, often insulting to those who cross his path. I have never met a person with less skill in editing their own words. Which is saying something considering the place I am from.

This is one of the reasons the man is my friend. I never have to wonder where Peter stands on any issue. He is, without apology, who he is. I admire and respect that.

It also doesn't hurt that he can grow vegetables better than anybody that I know. With few exceptions, virtually every seedling that I plant in the spring has its beginning in Peter's greenhouses in the dead of winter. On the property around these greenhouses you'll find fruit trees of all types, as well as a large field where Peter and his wife Claudia grow potatoes, tomatoes and, of particular interest to us here, sweet corn.

A couple weeks back Peter texted saying that the corn in his field was ready to be picked.

"Come over today or tomorrow and take as much as you want," he wrote.

Before I could answer Peter was back with the kind of snarky blather that is more his custom.

"Oh, and grab a few ears for your girlfriend Marc while you're at it."

See what I mean.

Now, Marc is a regular companion of mine, I'll admit, but he certainly is not my girlfriend.

He isn't even a girl. I checked with his wife Beth just yesterday to be sure.

Nonetheless, my mission was to score a couple dozen ears of corn and so the next day my girlfriend and I were trudging through Peter's corn field stocking up.

Which is how this pretty swell concoction of pasta, tomato, corn and ricotta salata came to be.



We start out, as we do with so many good things, sauteeing some garlic (three or four cloves) and a little hot pepper in a good bit of olive oil.



Once the garlic has softened (but not browned) toss in your tomatoes. We've got around three cups' worth of fresh garden tomatoes here.



The basil plants have been growing wild this year. I figured a handful of them wouldn't hurt.



You can skip this step if you like. For some reason, probably because I am incapable of thinking about corn without thinking about butter, I found myself adding half a stick just for the hell of it.



You'll need to give it a taste, of course, but after around 15 or 20 minutes of medium-to-high heat the tomatoes are likely to have turned into a respectable sauce. At which point you can add the corn (around two cups here, blanched and cut from the cob) and lower the heat to a slow simmer.



After the corn has warmed a bit (maybe a minute or two) add a half pound of ricotta salata, cut into small pieces.



Then immediately add your pasta and incorporate.



I blanched and froze a bunch of corn and will try this with canned tomatoes in the dead of winter, when Peter is in his greenhouses getting a jump on spring.