Wednesday, September 07, 2005

What's the deal with baby corn?

Otis and I went down for Thai food in Fremont tonight (actually, we went down for a salad at the new pizza place / bar / club, Nectar, but service was so slow we walked across the street, and it was better) and I got a Thai salad: peanut sauce on crisp lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, soybean sprouts -- and baby corn.

So what is the deal with this baby corn? It's showing up more and more places, usually (but not always) associated with Asian cuisine.

I checked the internets and WSU says that baby corn is not a dwarf variety of corn - it's just immature sweet corn, picked early. Okay, that mystery is cleared up - but it leaves a bigger one:

Does anybody really like baby corn?

I mean, I don't cotton to the stuff. It doesn't add to my dining experience; I avoid it, leave it, pick it out, anything but eat it. And I know several other people who do the same.

I know some people who will eat it, but I don't think I have ever met anyone who really likes it. I certainly have never been in the presence of anyone who actually asked for it specifically.

So, how do you feel? Fill out the poll over there, and we can build some academic literature on baby corn: the mystery vegetable of the 21st century.

This post brought to you by the Bureau of Trivial Inquiry.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Huck,

Are we also going to add a qualitative aspect to our research?

Just this week there was a piece of baby corn on my dinner salad at a restaurant. I ate the baby corn, which for some reason didn't even have sald dressing on it, and was really horrified at the taste (or lack there of). Without being drowned in sauce from an Asian cuisine, it was gross. Well maybe not gross, just like little corn that tastes like combination of dirt and cardboard-only less flavorful. It made me realize I didn't really like it even when it was drowned in a sauce, I just eat it out of habit, which I think began when I was a child and it had a novelty/cool factor.

Then in some weird coincidence you have this poll on baby corn, very freaky. I marked that I don't like it, yet eat it. I will now be attempting to end that habit. Down with baby corn! Resist the baby corn conspiracy!

Anonymous said...

yum, baby corn. Especially good with blue cheese, but then again, what isn't?
Mags

Faye in Spain said...

I buy baby corn in the supermarket to add to my stir-fry dinners, I like it! Although i don't particularly like corn on the cob. So perhaps you can't include my vote, I'm just strange. (friend of Neds)

Walaka said...

Mel: Nice to see your political activism extending to novelty vegetables.

Mags: Now, let's not get started on salad dressings...

Fazzle-Dazzle: Of course I know who you are. Your vote counts: if strangeness was a disqualifier, there wouldn't be any valid votes.

wheylona said...

baby corn = icky poo.

i generally try to avoid eating them nasty things, though on occassion i will eat them (if there is enough yummy sauce of some kind to mask the icky non-flavor of the creepy baby corns) though i NEVER enjoy them.

gonzalo seems to like them -- he voluntarily buys them and puts them on pizza. ick.

Anonymous said...

Has anyone wondered if Jonbai fixed the results of the baby corn poll? I heard a rumor about him making numerous votes on the poll about choices for what we should do for adventure.....or maybe that was Soapy???

Ned said...

Baby corn on antipastro at 13 Coins = yum. Miss 13 Coins. Yours, sentimentally, ned