Sweet Summer Corn: Corn Chowder

For most of you, the thought of soup at this time of year seems crazy.  For Southern Californians, who are able to grill in November, there's a tacit understanding that the trade off for that is cold days in summer. Last week was one of those "are you sure it's summer?" weeks. 

Which is really the perfect time for soup. But even in soup weather, it's hard to do something heavy and winters in July, so I like to stick with summer soups.  What's a summer soup? Soups that use some of summer's best produce- like sweet summer corn.  For some reason corn chowder always feels so summery to me and I think this is especially true  when you forgo the frozen kernels for something straight off the cobb.

Corn Chowder

1/4 cup butter

1/2 onion, diced

3/4 cup diced celery

2 Tbsp flour

3 Tbsp water

2 yukon gold potatoes, cubed

kernels from 5 ears of corn

2 Tbsp sugar

1/4 tsp white pepper

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 qt half and half

1. Melt butter in a pot.  Saute onion and celery for 5 minutes.
2. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and water.
3. Add the flour mixture, potatoes, corn, sugar, salt and pepper to the onions.  Cover with water and simmer 30 minutes.  
4. Stir in the half and half and simmer for another 2 minutes.