September: Succotash
Succotash Means Comfort for Our Family!
For many of us, September’s arrival brings forth a variety of contradictory feelings. There’s the pleasure we can still find in summer’s bounty of corn and beans and luscious ripe tomatoes. And, at the same time, that pleasure is mixed with the sad and sure knowledge that summer’s abundance is already winding down. All too soon, fresh tomatoes will be just a memory of tangy deliciousness. Peaches, if we eat them at all, will come out of a can, and the sweet corn on our plates will have journeyed there from the supermarket’s frozen food aisle. As we begin to enjoy the pleasures of autumn squash and the crunch and sweetness of apples and pears that accompany the arrival of Fall, let’s still indulge in the summer’s bounty that remains by blending two of the very best vegetables from late summer gardens, sweet corn and baby lima beans. This month, Molly and I are making a dish that defines comfort food for our family: Succotash!
I know already that many of you are shaking your heads and throwing your hands up in shock. Ask nearly any child to name a food they hate, and you’re likely to hear about lima beans! And way too many adults will tell you the same thing.
“Lima beans?” you gasp. “Who in the world loves lima beans?”
When we respond that we do, we know that your faith in us may momentarily diminish. But, give us – and succotash – a chance. You don’t like lima beans because you’ve never tasted creamy beans picked at the exact moment of their perfection, while the pods are smooth and unblemished, and just beginning to fill with small, creamy beans. Also, the cooked lima beans that have made their way onto your fork were too often vastly undercooked and served without the enhancements of tasty broth or the richness of an ample amount of butter.
We know you already love the sweetness of summer corn. Take our word for it: combining kernels freshly cut from the cobs and the unique blended flavor of evaporated milk and butter (or the richness of heavy cream) with the beans will, we hope, convert you to a lover of limas, and a devotee of the succotash our family serves whenever we are in need of a comfort food fix!
I grew up in a time and in a place where the vegetables on our family table came almost exclusively from our family’s vegetable garden. Every day of the late spring and summer, and well into the fall, we enjoyed the tomatoes, and the cucumbers, the crookneck and pattypan yellow summer squash, the string beans, and the butterbeans, and the sweet Silver Queen corn that our dad grew and picked daily from his enormous vegetable garden, and our mother cooked and froze to sustain us through the coming winters. Every year, our dad aimed to pick his first red ripe tomatoes before the Fourth of July, and sometimes when Fall arrived and the garden was still producing an abundance of green tomatoes, our mom and our grandmother would combine all of those green tomatoes with apples and citrus and cinnamon and cloves to fill glass canning jars with green tomato (meatless) mincemeat for winter holiday pies.
In July, we celebrated the arrival of the first butter beans, and then, we ate them nearly every day (sometimes in a meat-enhanced broth with dumplings, and sometimes in combination with freshly-picked sweet corn) for the rest of the summer. Although I can find and often buy sweet corn that I call, “good,” nothing I have ever bought, even at the farmers’ market, has ever equaled the corn my dad picked in the late summer morning and brought in from his vegetable garden to serve, dripping with butter at our mid-day dinner table.
Molly and I will be the first people to admit that it’s hard to find fresh unshelled lima beans still inside their pods. Since I moved away from Maryland’s Eastern Shore back in the late 1960s, I’ve found them at only a handful of grocery stores, and their appearance at farmers’ markets is rare. If you do find them where you live, celebrate! And, I hope that the farmer knows-- like my dad did -- the perfect time to pick them – before they flatten out and their creaminess morphs into a coarse starchy consistency reminiscent of elementary school paste!
If you can’t find fresh lima beans, or you’re not sure that the farmer who brought them to market knows how to pick them when they’ve reached the perfect state of readiness, buy frozen baby lima beans. If the package tells you they’re of the Fordhook variety, all the better! Even if the lima beans are not the variety that my dad planted and our family considers the best, you’ll be okay – as long as you’re buying frozen baby limas.
(Depending on where you live, they might be called “butter beans.” That’s how my family and everyone I knew identified them when I was growing up, and I still know southerners who wax poetic about butterbeans!)
As for the corn, buy fresh sweet corn in September. Try to assure that the corn kernels – like the lima beans inside the pods – are small in size. Over-ripe corn is just as undesirable as beyond-ready-to-pick or undercooked lima beans!
If sweet corn season has passed, sweet or super-sweet frozen cut corn is also delicious, and succotash made from frozen baby lima beans and frozen super-sweet cut corn graces our comfort-food tables throughout winter and spring.
Succotash is a side dish on our family tables. I have seen more elaborate recipes that include, in addition to the corn and beans, tomatoes, onions and peppers, okra and Andouille sausage, and sometimes shrimp as well. These versions of succotash are surely delicious entrees on many Southern tables. Our recipe, though, includes only lima beans and sweet corn and a sweet milky broth. We can thank Native Americans for creating this dish, and that’s only one reason why you can usually find it on our Thanksgiving tables. You can save this recipe to serve at your own Thanksgiving feast, but Molly and I urge you to make it right now, while you can still scrape sweet corn kernels from just-picked and husked cobs, and, if you’re lucky, experience the tender creaminess of freshly picked and shelled butterbeans.
-Penny
Succotash
serves 6-8 as a side dish
Ingredients:
3 pounds fresh lima beans, shelled, rinsed under cold running water (3 cups shelled), or 2 10-ounce bags frozen baby lima beans (3 cups or a little more)
Corn kernels cut from 3 ears fresh sweet corn, or 3 cups frozen sweet or super-sweet corn
3 TBSP. sweet butter
½ tsp. Kosher salt
Several grinds black pepper
1-1/4 tsp. granulated sugar
1 to 1-1/2 cup evaporated milk*, according to preference, or 1 to 1-1/2 cups heavy cream
Preparation:
In a medium saucepan combine beans, salt, pepper, and granulated sugar, butter, and enough cold water to cover by an inch. Bring to boil over medium-high heat, reduce heat to medium-low, cover the pan and continue cooking at a slowly bubbling simmer for 30 minutes. Taste a bean or two, and continue cooking until the consistency of the inside of the bean is creamy.
Husk the fresh sweet corn. Under cold running water, use a vegetable brush to remove all traces of silk. Use a sharp serrated knife to cut corn kernels off the cobs. Add corn kernels, either fresh or unthawed frozen, to the simmering beans. Return the lid to the pan, and continue simmering for 5 minutes.
Add evaporated milk or heavy cream until you reach the ratio of liquid to veggies you prefer (at least a cup full) and serve in small bowls immediately.
*I don’t know why we prefer the evaporated milk over the heavy cream – Perhaps because that’s what my sisters and I, and, later, our children, grew up with. Both are delicious. Try each, and choose the dairy you prefer.