Creamy Elote Corn Pasta

This requires a touch more commitment than your average dump-and-stir weeknight pasta, but the reward is a golden and glossy dish that’s an exuberant celebration of summer corn—equal parts sweet, saline, and savory with a tiny spike of heat, evocative of its elote corn namesake.

When blended, raw corn kernels give up all of their starch, and it takes only a few moments of cooking to turn the resulting sauce thick and creamy (with no actual heavy cream involved!). Blistering some of the corn to finish the dish with—either on the stovetop or grill—is highly recommended but to simplify, you can just boil those cobs briefly along with the pasta instead (add it to the pot at the last minute or so) before cutting the kernels off in wide strips. Nobody will know.