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SWEET CORN–WHY EVEN BOTHER COOKING IT?

Granted, there is something special about eating corn on the cob in the summertime. Shucking it, boiling it, and slathering it with salt and butter makes an ear of corn a pretty delicious treat. In fact, using less-than-stellar corn and going street-fair style with it, coating grilled ears with mayonnaise and giving them a good rub of aged cheese, is another example of the deliciousness of cooked corn.

And yet, this time of year, sweet corn is just so incredibly good, that cooking it at all seems a waste of energy. A recent dinner out in Brooklyn yielded a summer salad of raw corn (off the cob, obviously), diced onions, Storm Ranch olive oil, and fresh herbs–an idea so simple and wonderful that I’ve had no qualms about just stealing it outright and serving it to friends at home.

But even better, I’ve found, is corn risotto. Start by making any sort of risotto you’d like (in the summer, I like to puree some basil in the food processor, stirring it into the risotto at the same point where I grate my cheese, turning the whole thing a sort of Ecto Cooler-level of bright green). Right at the end, I fold raw corn kernels in, studding the risotto with the little yellow jewels (added benefit: because the corn has such a non-porous surface, it doesn’t turn green in the basil puree risotto), just using the risotto’s residual heat to warm the corn ever-so-slightly. Each bite pops with tiny, almost caviar-like reminders that it’s summer.

SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE

The Finnish crayfish season begins July 21 and runs through the end of August. This period is open season for crayfish parties, and my Finnish family had ours this past week. In addition to large communal platters of red-orange crayfish topped with crown dill, there are several stock elements: buttered toast, silly bibs, the practice of sucking loudly on the body of the crayfish, schnapps or vodka, and–most importantly in my book–drinking songs.

The idea is that you work away at a crayfish for a while, extract the meat, pile it onto a toast, then take a shot (of Koskenkorva vodka if you know what you’re doing) and sing a song with every tail you put away. It only takes a passing glance at the near future, in which you will be eating between 12 and 30 crayfish tails, to realize that this is a terrible idea, probably invented by some derelict turn-of-the-century baron with a lot of debt and a thirsty streak. The practice is ill-suited for extended non-pirate families on summer vacation.

But it turns out singing can be done schnappsless. Whenever a song sprung up, everyone at the banquet table, a group ranging in age from one to 88, hooted along, even my brother and sister and I, who are half American and don’t speak fluent Finnish or Swedish.

“What are we singing about?” I asked my cousin.

“A pirate. He gets hanged.” She went back to hollering. During another song a few minutes later, I heard my sister ask my mom the same question.

“Oh, this is a true story,” my Mom answered. “It tells you how to kill a man with steel in the back.” I looked at the one year old across from me at the table. She had given up on crayfish and was sucking on a piece of toast.

Later, I asked my mom to translate some of the songs we’d sung. She ran her finger over the handout of song lyrics my cousin had made.

“‘Grandpa Has His Own Bar,’ ‘When I Die (You Can Have my Schnapps Glass),’ ‘The Throat Lubricating Song,’ ‘Jänis Istui Mmaassa,’–oh that’s a children’s song but they changed the lyrics so instead of the rabbit jumping, he’s drinking heavily.”

“This is what we were singing together at the table?” I flashed back to the wholesome faces of my relatives.

“Noooo, of course not. We didn’t get to all of these. We didn’t do this one: ‘If your wife tells you not to drink, then drink and drink. If your wife tells you not to bring liquor in, then bring and bring, but don’t you ever stop drinking, only switch for yourself a better wife. And drink and sing and drink and sing and drink and sing.’” Or rather, drink moderately and keep an eye on babies and make toast and reminisce and eat and sing lewd songs.

GETTING OVER IN MONTEPULCIANO

Of all the wine towns in Tuscany, Montepulciano is the easiest to get to from my family’s hilltop hideaway in neighboring Umbria. The problem is that Montepulciano is also the closest wine town to the Autostrada that runs between Rome to Florence. Touists exit the highway by the busload at Chianciano Terme (a thermal spa reminiscent of the setting for Fellini’s 8 1/2) and labor up a road circumnavigating the steep hill. Then–boom!–they’re in Lord of the Rings. The buses park outside the medieval walls, and the holidaymaking hordes thread their way through a great stone portal and climb the steep cobbled streets.

I went with my daughter and her boyfriend, intent on introducing them to the pleasures of drinking wine in the town where it is produced. We arrived in the middle of the hottest summer in recent memory. A roadside thermometer read 41 degrees Centigrade (106 degrees Fahrenheit), yet the temperature didn’t deter the throngs who huffed and puffed up the Gracciano nel Corso. It was just after one p.m., with the burning sun at its apex, when we decided we were starving. We passed on a Jolly Café–a franchise specializing in bags of chips and desiccated little panini–and also rejected a pizza parlor with outdoor seating, where the pale puffy faces of a large German family too much resembled the doughy underdone pies set in front of them.

As we ascended the hill at what seemed like a 45 degree angle, the crowds thinned, and so did the frequency of kiosks crammed with gelato, postcards, and souvenir aprons emblazoned with steaming plates of spaghetti. Suddenly up ahead loomed Caffé Poliziano, named after a Renaissance poet born in the town. The place was rather swank in a rustic sort of way, and a handbill suggested it was a favorite of Fellini’s, who enthusiastically compared it to Vienna and Prague. “It’s only a pastry shop,” I lamented. “But look, there’s also a lunch menu,” my daughter riposted. And indeed there was, offering a few typical Tuscan dishes, including carpaccios, pastas, and a handful of hot secondi at rather modest prices.

Appurtentant to the pastry shop and down a few steps was a dining room with windows flung open to reveal a splendid view of the undulating Val di Chiana countryside. Though the décor was right out of the 1920s, the menu boasted an 1868 origin. My daughter ordered the panzanella, a well-oiled salad of the area’s notorious saltless bread tossed with tomatoes and cucumbers. This version was pleasantly vinegary and surmounted with a little heap of chopped raw onions, and it had been carefully shaped into a truncated cone in a topiary style of panzanella we’d never seen before. The tomatoes were as sweet as a sunny day on Mount Olympus.

Other dishes quickly followed, including an octopus carpaccio in which the tentacles had been bound gelatinously together and sliced into what looked like headcheese, and a homemade gnocchi in a subtle pork ragu. The meal for three with many bottles of fizzy water ran less than 50 Euros–and we left refreshed, but unable to find room for the cream-oozing napoleons and dainty cookies that filled the pastry cases. On to the wine bars!

Caffé Poliziano
Via di Voltaia nel Corso, 27
Montepulciano, Tuscany, Italy