Comfort food - Boiled corn snack

Thao Uyen

Finally it’s corn season, at least here in France. I’m so happy that the season has come at last! I’ve been waiting and waiting since last year. Vietnamese people love corn. The proof of that is in their cuisine: they create many dishes with it, mostly desserts but also soups and street foods. I decide to dedicate my next posts of August to corn with its strange yet delicious dishes and I will also cover on how to choose good corn and its many benefits.

This is a simple boiled corn snack in Vietnam, a tribute to my generation and older ones. Nowadays this boiled corn snack is not very popular but it was not the case 20 years ago. After 1975 peace came back to the country, but the wars and its many bombing episodes left the land barren and the population devastated. Rice was so scarce and people had to search for other carb sources, among which are the popular sweet potato and corn. Around the end of the 80s and 90s, boiled corn became a snack and comfort food for many, me included. Back then children of the whole neighborhood played and went on many adventures together (what I actually mean is they got into mishaps together). Children used to sit in a circle with a whole pot of boiled corns and eat and joke around while those corns sweeten their childhood. The ears of corn are usually boiled whole with their silk intact for added benefits, like this:
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Today the country has changed so much and boiled corn is no longer a substitute for rice. Corn nowadays is a versatile ingredient. Vietnamese people are a whole creative lot. Now they have grilled corn with spring onion oil, corn soup, fried corn cake, corn sautée with shrimps, corn pudding (not just one type of pudding but dozens) and the list is not exhaustive. However boiled corn remains for me, and for many Vietnamese of my generation and older ones, a sweet comfort food.