Good summertime corn is a wonderful thing. Growing up in Illinois, “sweet corn” was everywhere, and the taste and scrunchy crunch of corn on the cob held with buttery fingers brings me right back there in my memories. Tastes like summer! All that wonderful Midwestern corn kind of spoiled me, though, and now that I live in the Northeast, good quality fresh corn is a little harder to come by since it doesn’t travel well. The natural sugar in the corn degrades once it is detached from the stalk, and even more so under refrigeration. However, I was fortunate to receive a few ears in my farm share (CSA) box last week — grown in Pennsylvania, just next door.

I couldn’t wait to make a recipe I remembered from Cooking Light, but I couldn’t locate the original, even on their website. Must have been in a long-ago discarded magazine. Luckily I remembered the ingredients, although the proportions were kind of an experiment – a successful one, thankfully. The original calls for grilling the corn, but we don’t have an outdoor space in which to grill, so I’ve adapted it for oven roasting. You can scale this up if you have more corn – use 1 tablespoon of butter for each ear of corn, and adjust the seasonings accordingly. If you’re really embracing the Midwest summer thing, eat it outside at dusk while watching fireflies!