Corn Soup with Nutmeg

Boulud Recipe 4

Making this recipe was sort of cheating because it is from a different Daniel Boulud Cookbook, Cooking with Daniel Boulud.  Being somewhat discouraged with the three "Café" recipes I have made, I thought going a step up to a more "restaurant" type of focus that I might have better luck.  And I did.  Since I moved back to New York (state) I felt like I could start eating corn (on the cob) again.  Sorry midwest, but I don't trust you when it comes to corn.  Your fields are too vast and the sacks your corn comes in, even at the farmers market, seem a little too corporate to be non-gmo or monsanto or both.  But back here in the empire state, Hand Melon Farm in Greenwich grows a number of varieties of corn, all unsprayed.  The variety I bought for this soup was Providence, and it was sweet.  Best eaten uncooked.  But cook it I did, because though Boulud's recipe makes a cold soup, I wanted a hot soup.  He offers in his introduction to the recipe that you can throw in the some aromatics, celery, carrots, onions, perhaps some potatoes, and make this into a corn chower.  Corn chowder was just what I wanted, but how to make it come together as a chowder is information that is not offered.  Undeterred, I simply cooked the vegetables in butter until soft and set aside, following the recipe the normal way, then adding the vegetables back into the mix at the end.  This worked just fine.  And it wasn't difficult.  The soup had good corn flavor, though less strong than I had expected. The chives were a nice touch as a garnish, and my only qualm was that the nutmeg was barely discernable which is easily resolved by adding a little more than called for in the recipe.  Overall, this was a success and enjoyable to eat both hot and cold, as well as a few days later as leftovers.