Mom's first NYT Cooking Recipe

Because good news! Cooking for Fun is back!!

Good morning. We have big news.

I told you Cooking for Fun would be back, but what I didn’t tell you is that our first recipe would be for New York Times Cooking, baby!!

Corn and Parmesan Pasta - watch the full episode here.

And the full recipe is FREE to access on NYT Cooking with the gift link here!

And pause, let us take a moment to appreciate the beautiful imagery New York Times Cooking put together:

I could look at it all day. Credit: Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.

They say manifest your dreams, and I cannot emphasize enough how working with New York Times Cooking is a dream. You’ll see a few of my recipes show up on their pages in the coming months, and I’m thrilled to start this collaboration off with an absolute favorite.

Now I first uploaded Corn and Parmesan Pasta in 2024. It’s a peak summer recipe (we’re still in peak summer, I refuse to accept otherwise) that uses the sweetness of corn to counter the saltiness of fresh parmesan, coming together in a thick, creamy sauce that is so simple — yet so uniquely good.

When we finished filming the video for YouTube, I commented that I always forget how beautiful the sauce is. Corn is a natural thickener, so as the sauce clings to the pasta, it thickens and turns into the creamy, cheesy combo it was always meant to be.

About the (optional!) corn broth, because I’m a “if we have it, we should use it!” kind of cook. When you cut corn kernels off the cob, you still are leaving behind some of that sweetness and flavor, no matter how good you are at slicing. Corn cobs make a pretty versatile broth, so this recipe opts to simmer them to leech out all their flavor. That becomes the pasta water for the recipe, which eventually is the water we blend in with the sauce.

While it’s not mandatory, I love how corn broth has a richness and thickness to it, which helps thicken the sauce while enhancing the flavor. It’s a low-waste option that I love implementing.

Blend your corn sauce with a towel, or an immersion blender, because you have options! The sauce needs to be blended to reach that perfect texture, and you can either do that in a traditional blender or with an immersion blender in your pot.

The beauty of a New York Times recipe is there are already comments in the comments section, and a lot of people are wondering why I say to cover your blender with a towel, not a lid. The easiest answer is that when you blend hot liquids, you build up pressure in your blender, which usually means…an explosion. So to take away that pressure (both figuratively and literally), I swap the lid for a linen towel. This means I can blend the sauce for as long as I like and no pressure builds up. No catastrophe occurs! Win-win.

The recipe says blend a third of the sauce at a time to eliminate it splattering your towel, but if you start your blender on low speed, I’ve never had issues with it splashing up to the top!

Salt, pepper, and more salt are big keys to making this sauce feel balanced, craveable, and worth going in for bite after bite. Salt naturally tempers sweetness, and the corn, of course, is going to be sweet!

I like to season throughout the cooking process, but hold off on adding any additional salt after the sauce is blended. It’s important to add the parmesan first to see how that will amp up the salty factor, then season from there. But this recipe can handle a liberal hand of both salt and pepper, so if you think it’s erring too sweet, add a pinch of salt and a few cracks of pepper until you find the balance.

And that’s it!! I am elated that this is on New York Times Cooking, both the site and the app, and you can access it via this free link below:

Corn and Parmesan Pasta (Gift Link)

If you have made it before and loved it, it would mean the world to me if you left a comment on NYT Cooking. If you make it this weekend and love it, that means the world to me, too.

I hope your summer is going wonderfully, and I’ll see you next week!

Xoxo,

Corn_Snacks