Pan Roasted Corn and Tomato Salad is full-flavored without being fussy. Heat seared in a skillet primed with bacon and onion, then simply dressed, succulent fresh corn makes a delicious base for this filling side dish. Serve either hot or at room temperature.

Pan Roasted Corn with Tomato Salad served in a white bowl.

Side Dishes – The Old Recipes

Some of the old recipes, the ones I remember fondly from when I was a child, are hard to come by these days. The specific steps Aunt Hen and Mammaw took to prepare meals on a daily basis are lost somewhere in the shadows of my memory. I watched them as they worked in the kitchen. I helped them when I could. When they told me about their process, I listened. These days I still fondly remember the flavors and textures of their cooking. Still no one wrote down the details, the quantities, times and temperatures of their daily routine cooking.

I guess I always imagined that the keys to that knowledge, the formulas for their kitchen alchemy, came from and remained in the well worn cookbooks sitting on a shelf near the kitchen. When they passed away I carefully guarded those cookbooks. I flipped through the spattered pages and perused the notes and clippings that I found in the process. Unfortunately, much of what I was looking for was no where to be found. The recipes for Squash Pancakes, Southern Green Beans, Cooked Kale, Collard Greens or Fried Corn, the stuff we ate as weeknight fare, weren’t written out in any of those old cookbooks.

Not that the recipes I found weren’t interesting. There were many then-innovative, now-vintage recipes that were quite tempting and unique. But, when I turned to the vegetable section in those old cookbooks, I found mostly casseroles: Broccoli Cheese Casserole, Green Bean Casserole, Squash Casserole, even Eggplant Casserole. To my recollection, those were company style vegetables, recipes calling for lots of butter, cheese, cracker crumbs and, almost always, Campbell’s soup.

Remembering Aunt Hen’s Fried (or Pan-Roasted) Corn

Those vegetable casserole recipes don’t appeal to me much these days. What I crave is the comfort of old-fashioned home cooking without an excessive amount of added fat and artificial ingredients. I want vegetables like we ate then, fresh from the garden on a daily basis.

Take, for example, a simple skillet of Fried Corn. I can still picture Aunt Hen cutting the corn from the cob and remember the intriguing way the kernels stuck together in clusters. Then I was enchanted by the properties of corn: the rough but supple husk, the soft silk that cushioned and clung to the kernels, the milky liquid that oozed as the corn was cut away from the cob.

Now I see things differently. While I acknowledge the beauty, I crave a different set of details. I remember that frying the corn in cast iron browned the kernels a little. Still, I can only guess at how much bacon grease primed the skillet first? Did Aunt Hen brown onion before she added the fresh cut corn? How much salt and pepper were needed to bring out the savor? No matter how I adjust these basic ingredients I can’t seem to match the flavor I remember. Nor do I know how to update the recipe to a more contemporary version of Fried Corn, one that still hits on at least some of the flavor notes that set off my nostalgic comfort food endorphins.

Pan Roasted Corn cooked in a cast iron skillet.

Resonating with Pan Roasted Corn and Tomato Salad

In a stroke of good luck, while catching up on my blog reading, I found a post at Eat. Drink. Think. about Mark Bitman’s recipe for Pan Roasted Corn and Tomato Salad. Reading through it I had to smile. This recipe’s title made me think of succulent fresh corn, heat seared and simply dressed. Imagine my surprise when in it I recognized the makings of the Fried Corn of my childhood, updated.

Of course Aunt Hen never added avocado, chili peppers or fresh lime juice to her Fried Corn. Those ingredients weren’t something you would regularly find in her kitchen. Still, this recipe for Pan Roasted Corn and Tomato Salad does make use of one staple from her kitchen. It uses a fair amount of bacon grease to season the corn. Since I just can’t seem to get the seasoning right for a basic pan of plain old Fried Corn I decided to give this slightly more embellished version a try.

I am so glad I did. It turned out to be wonderfully full-flavored but not too fussy. Good hot or at room temperature, the taste is fabulous. In there somewhere there is enough of a hint of the fried corn from my childhood to satisfy. This is what we called good eating! Give it a try. I think you will like it as much as I do.

Enjoy!