Corn on the Cob - My new favourite microwave food

My sweetcorn is now ready for harvesting and of all the things I grow, this has got to be my favourite. I have always loved sweetcorn and eat it pretty much every day but corn on the cob is my favourite way to eat it and freshly picked, home grown corn is beyond comparison.

There are lots of good reasons to eat sweetcorn, with flavour having to be high up on the list. However, there are a few downsides too - such as, having to pick it out of your teeth afterwards! It is also a bit fiddly to prepare, especially removing all those "silks", which inevitably end up all over the kitchen floor. And when you grow lovely long corns, finding a pan big enough to boil them in can be a bit tricky.

Recently, I came across a tip on the internet for cooking corn that took away some of the hassle associated with preparing and cooking corn and now I love corn on the cob as much for its convenience factor as for its flavour. So now corn on the cob is my favourite microwave food.

Firstly, having freshly picked your sweetcorn, leave it wrapped up in its greenery. You need only trim off the bottom and top of the leafy jacket so that it fits more easily into the microwave. Our corn is lovely and long this year and I can only fit 2 into my microwave at a time.

Simply place them on the plate and microwave them for 5 minutes then take them out and leave them wrapped up in their leafy coat for a few minutes to keep warm and to continue cooking. When ready to serve, split open the leaves and pull them and the silks away from the hot corn. You may need to protect your hands from the heat whilst you do this and you may need to trim off the base from the corn with a sharp knife but removing the leaves and silks come away easily.

This done, put a spike in the base end and serve hot with salted butter or olive oil and black pepper.