Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Corn Moon

August moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

Happy New Corn Moon! The moon is new today at 12:16pm on the West Coast; 3:16pm on the East. The moon is in Leo, and so especially conducive to Creativity. If you have made it a ritual to make a list of wishes on the New Moon, it is a wonderful time to include wishes that relate to new creative projects you've been longing to begin, or old ones that you'd like to re-start. During the first eight hours after the moon is new is the most powerful time to make a wish-list, so maybe tonight you can find a quiet moondark moment to do so.

This next lunar phase was called the Corn Moon in the Celtic calendar. For those of you who have been wondering where the "names" of the moons come from, they actually come from a variety of sources. Many cultures that observed a lunar calendar named each phase of the moon, so there is a variety of different names for each moon, depending on the culture doing the naming. For my newsletter, I draw from the names used in Old Farmer's Almanacs; in 16th Century England; in Celtic & Pagan culture; in Colonial America; and names used by different indigenous cultures of this continent. I pick the name that has the most resonance for me at the moment -- so it's possible that next year the Mead Moon will be the Buck Moon instead!

With the farmer's markets here full of fresh wonderful ears of sweet corn, this definitely feels like the Corn Moon! It always seems like the height of summer, and a highlight of the year, when there is such an abundance of local tomatoes, peppers, corn, zucchini, eggplant, cucumbers, and melons -- along with plenty of basil and cilantro to accompany it all. Since I shop and cook with the seasons, it is the only time of year I get to enjoy these wonderful foods and the dishes made with them.

My summer is full of bowls and bowls of fresh salsa and cucumber raita; loaves of zucchini bread (how many til I'm sick of it?); and platters of sliced melon. I've made eggplant stuffed with tomatoes, onions, garlic and parsley -- a Turkish dish called "imam bayilde" -- "the holy man fainted." (Did he faint because of the deliciousness of the dish or because of the cost of the generous use of olive oil??) In my cauldron I've stirred rice with sweet peppers; delicate pale yellow squash bisque; mixed summer vegetable soup au pistou (with a mince of basil added at the end), and eggplant stewed with mustard seeds, potatoes, cumin, coriander, and turmeric. I've made cucumber pickles using lactic-acid pickling process, with delicious results, and even a "pickled" salsa, which had wonderful depth of flavor.

And, inevitably, my summer is full of lots of corn. It is one of my favorite foods and I never seem to get enough of it. I eat it lots of it on the cob. Sometimes I cut off the kernels and saute them with butter; or with butter and rice, or stuff them into empanadas or enchiladas. One of my favorite food memories from childhood is of "corn fritters." My mother and I would mix corn kernels with a little flour, egg, salt and pepper and then deep-fry the mixture by the spoonful, yielding crispy brown nuggets of wonderful corn flavor.

Recently I tried a variation on this: fresh corn cut from the cob, mixed with minced anaheim pepper and scallions, and stirred with an egg yolk, a bit of the sourdough starter I keep in my fridge, a little extra flour (I think this was unnecessary) and a generous pinch of salt and pepper (very necessary), then fried like pancakes in a pan. So delicious, and full of memories of those childhood fritters. You don't need sourdough starter to do it; but I'm obsessed with my sourdough starter, and want to use it in everything. It is more nutritious, more flavorful, and more digestible than straight flour, so I try to incorporate it whenever I can.

Having admitted my passion for corn, I am obliged to point out that what we call "corn" here in the States is not what the Celts would have meant by "corn"; nor what is meant by the word "corn" even today in Europe. In Europe, "corn" generally means "grain," and British recipes will call for maize (or sometimes "sweetcorn") meaning what we call corn.

Looking into the etymology of the word "corn", it is clear that it is only in the US that the term has come to mean the species zea mays. It appears that when colonists first encountered the plant zea mays that had been cultivated and developed over many millennia by peoples of this continent, they considered it a grain like wheat or barley and so named it "Indian Corn" (ie. Indian Grain). Over the centuries, in part because of its ubiquitousness in American colonial life, it became known simply as "corn," while barley, wheat, rye and other familiar cereal crops came to be referred to as "grains." Early on, many colonial dishes that made use of "Indian Corn" were given names like "Indian Pudding" (a dessert made of cornmeal and sweetened with molasses); and (offensive though it may sound to us) a bread called "rye'n'injun bread", made of cornmeal and rye flour.

Whether you call it grain or vegetable, zea mays is a fabulous plant. And so in honor of the Corn Moon and the history of what we call corn, I'm going to cook a potful of succotash. Though I am of the generation that can't think of the word without also thinking of the word "sufferin' " and a strong lisp, it is one of my favorite dishes to make and to eat. The word "succotash" comes from a Narragansett word, m'sickquatash -- with variants sukquttahash and msakwitash -- which apparently meant "fragments" and referred to a stew of various ingredients, always including corn. The dish "succotash" has meant many things over the years, but has generally been a stew-like dish including corn and beans.

I like to make mine by sauteeing onions or leeks in butter, and adding cooked shell beans (usually available at the farmer's markets this time of year) such as limas or butter beans or even cranberry beans, a bit of ancho chile pepper (or chipotle for more heat), a bit of cream, plenty of fresh corn, and seasoning with salt and pepper. Sometimes I add a dice of sweet bell peppers to the saute. It is a celebration of corn, of its deep importance to the Narragansett and other indigenous people of this continent, and of the rich contribution it has made to the cuisine of European-Americans.

A few notes on last month's Mead Moon newsletter: Although "organic" is not necessarily what you want to look for in honey, it does appear that common bee-keeping practice includes using pesticides, chemicals, and antibiotics in the hives to prevent and control varroa mites, hive beetle, and foulbrood. Even many small-scale, environmentally aware, local beekeepers use some of these methods when they feel it is necessary.

I received a wonderful letter from a beekeeper in Texas who has had great success with a system of pest control using mite screens, citrus oil, and dried orange peels in her smoker (click to read it). So you may want to inquire further into the pest-control protocols used in the honey you buy. For those of you who want a pesticide-free raw honey that isn't necessarily local, you can try "Really Raw" honey, available in many health-food stores, which comes with a wonderful layer of pollen, propolis and honeycomb on the top.

Just when you really didn't want any more information (isn't this confusing enough??), there seems to be some disagreement about what constitutes "raw" honey. Some say it shouldn't be heated to above 117 degrees (the temperature that deactivates most enzymes), others say truly raw honey is completely unheated and never goes above the highest temperature of a beehive -- 100 degrees. Such honey will often say "unheated" in addition to "raw" on the label. (The "Really Raw" honey mentioned above also says "unheated.")

This is all just more evidence that it is next-to-impossible to be a complete food purist. So many questions about what to buy and what to eat don't have perfect or "right" answers, so you just have to feel your way through it, using heart and mind, and tastebuds, and a sense of humor. Either that or put a hive on your roof and seek out some citrus oil!

Meanwhile, have a wonderful Corn Moon. Eat cobs of it while it's ripe and in season and piled high at the farmer's markets. Contemplate these words of Eduardo Galeano, writing about the indigenous people of Guatemala:

Let us remember this miracle of life as we stir in our cauldrons a creamy corn chowder, a nourishing succotash, some fluffy white popcorn, or a thickening polenta; and give thanks for the gift of zea mays, and many millennia of farmers who planted their fields.