Sweet Summer Succotash
lessons from a restaurant chef, at home
When I started this newsletter over two years ago, the general idea was simple: I’m a professional recipe developer, and this is how I cook for my (hungry, often picky) family. Granted, it’s a broad theme, but it has led us to some lovely recipes and practical cooking tips that I hope have found their way into your family’s repertoire.
More than fifty posts later, another theme has emerged.
For those of you who are new here (welcome!), my husband is a restaurant chef. I develop recipes for home cooks. Those jobs sound similar, but they’re built on very different assumptions.
Restaurant chefs have a walk-in filled with ingredients to choose from, a team of cooks to assist, dishwashers to tidy. Home cooks have to plan, shop, unload groceries, then prep, cook, and clean—often entirely on their own.
Mike and I talk about recipes constantly, the way other couples might talk about chores, after-school plans, or family vacations. While we share an ethos for clean, local, seasonal cooking, we disagree often.
He doesn’t take shortcuts; my recipes require them, or no one would ever make them.
His goal is the best possible result, no matter what it takes to get there.
My goal is the best possible result that’s achievable on a Wednesday with hangry children.
Take, for example, the first time we made ratatouille together. He insisted on cooking every vegetable separately, in its own pan, before finally marrying them together in a homemade tomato sauce (made in yet another pot). The result was perfect. You should have seen the kitchen carnage.
The truth is, he’s usually right about what makes a dish exceptional. But I speak for the people when I say that ratatouille is not getting made that way at home.
Over time, I’ve realized that I’ve been absorbing his lessons, then subconsciously at times, simplifying and adapting these ideas into techniques that make sense in a home kitchen.
Which brings us to this succotash.
When I told Mike that our CSA haul had inspired my next Substack recipe, he told me he too was working on a new succotash set for the brioche-encrusted flounder at FIG. So on Sunday, we workshopped it together.
His version included a beautiful creamed corn folded into the vegetables to give the dish body and richness without using actual cream. I wanted to include sliced baby potatoes, so the side could function as both vegetable and starch—making you one step closer to dinner on the table.
Like the ratatouille, he wanted every vegetable to cook separately; I countered that maybe careful timing could accomplish a similar result in a single pot.
My nod to his restaurant technique is a quick corn broth that helps bring everything together. After scraping the kernels, the cobs are simmered with thyme and a parmesan rind while you prep the remaining vegetables. But don’t worry: the rest is done in one pot and cooks in less than 30 minutes.
After all, that may be the real theme of this newsletter—finding the sweet spot between restaurant chef ambition and real-life, aspirational-yet-practical home cooking.
Because isn’t compromise key to a happy marriage?
xx
Jenni (and Mike)
the recipe: Summer Succotash with Parmesan-Corn Broth
Serves 6
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