Picnic

I went along on a ride to a picnic that was held by Atlanta’s InTown Touring Club. Byron had promised that he would schedule it for a time when I could actually make it (it seems like I haven’t been able to get to any of the club rides so far but I would have been pissed if I’d missed the picnic). We all met up at Grant Park where Katie, Brian and I had selected a good spot—lots of shady trees and plenty of room to play whiffle ball. Two grills were trucked in on bicycle as well as a ton of other stuff. They were like pack animals lugging all this food and cooking supplies to our picnic site. People brought some really yummy snack type foods and delicious sides. We grilled all kinds of stuff—sausages, fancy hot dogs, veggie burgers and teriyaki chicken. I also grilled up red peppers and eggplant, as I usually do: cut into strips or rounds, marinate in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, dash of worcestershire, salt, red pepper flakes. But the most interesting thing was the corn, here’s how it worked:

Cut 6 ears of shucked corn into 3 pieces each—actually, one or two were too small so they only got cut into 2 pieces. The idea is to make mini corns. Put them around the perimeter of a hot grill and flip them frequently, keeping a good eye on so they do not burn. They turn a nice, deep golden color pretty fast, but if they start charring, pull them off and wait until the grill cools somewhat. You want some browned parts but not charcoal corn. Move them around the grill as necessary; pull them off when the kernels are soft when you poke them—probably about 10-12 minutes. Ahead of time, not at the picnic but in my own kitchen, I melted 4 tablespoons of butter and tossed in 1 teaspoon of paprika, ½ teaspoon chili powder and 1 teaspoon of cayenne when the butter was hot. Poured this into a little container to combine with the juice and zest of one lime. Added salt and pepper to the mixture and covered the container to take with me to the picnic. When the corn was finished grilling and still hot, I tossed the corn pieces with the chili-lime-butter mixture. People seemed to like it a lot.