Malt Vinegar, Sweet Corn, and Summer Goodbyes
Welcome to Summer Food Memories, a series we’re doing in collaboration with Tasting Table. We asked four people—writers and chefs we like, plus a couple surprises—to help us say goodbye to summer with culinary nostalgia. Then Tasting Table developed recipes to match.
Photo courtesy Tasting Table; design by Tiffany Choi
So far we’ve made hamburgers with novelist and lapsed vegetarian Emma Straub and cold Danish buttermilk soup based on Christian Puglisi’s memories. Today’s essay is a double-header from the L.A.-based Trois Mec and Animal chefs: Jon Shook on ’80s-style summer corn and Vinny Dotolo on French fries and vinegar.
JON: When I was growing up in Norman Beach, Florida, food wasn’t a super-big thing at my house. But there was a farm down in New Smyrna Beach, right by this small airport for private planes, mostly, and two or three times a year, we would go down there and my mom would get 10 or 12 ears of corn for the family. I always remember how sweet it was.
I’m a product of the ’80s, when the big thing was frozen food and TV dinners, so this was kind of a treat. It was like eating candy in a weird way.
My mom would boil tap water in an aluminum pot with plastic handles. Right when it came out and I put it on the plate, I would put iodized salt on it—the humidity was really high, so we had that salt in a shaker with bits of dry rice in it—and then I would smother it in I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. I’ve always been obsessed with that oily flavor it gives you. I would put a tablespoon of that sh*t on there and it would drip off and I’d roll the corn back into it on the plate.
Still to this day, whenever I eat corn, I always have the corn from those days in my mind. I start thinking, ’Is this as good as the corn I remember?’ Here in Southern California, we only have corn for a small window, and it doesn’t get as sweet as it did in Florida.
VINNY: My grandfather was an antiques collector. He took me to flea markets and one of them had hand-cut, Belgian-style fries in a cup. I doused them in cheapvinegar. I didn’t love McDonald’s fries like I loved those.
My grandfather prompted me to try the vinegar and I did and then I was addicted to it. I remember it—that cheap malt vinegar—in the bottom of the cup, wearing out the paper, so vividly. And that smell; that waft of vinegar when it hit the hot fries… We’d walk up and down the aisles of the booths and he’d argue with vendors over prices.
Now I like collecting little things here and there. Antique coinage, that kind of stuff. Not in a hoarding, pack-rat way, but it’s really got some nostalgia for me.
And I still prefer my French fries with vinegar.
GET THE RECIPE: Crispy Potatoes with Malt Vinegar and Corn
