"There's 'Wining' In Baseball"

Tom Hanks taught there is no crying in baseball, and while I'm sure that applies to whining, we added wine and baseball to create a fun Friday night date!

Half a dozen blocks from our house is a new mixed use development called West Ave that is home to high end shopping, trendy apartments, and some really cool restaurants.


Cru is a wine bar with outposts in Houston, Austin, & Dallas, and with indoor & outdoor seating, really great music streaming lightly from hidden speakers, and a pretty modern decor, it was the perfect place for a romantically fun date night!

Feeling adventurous, we each started with a tasting flight of wines.  Liz choose a flight of white wines with complete with 3 different sauvigon blancs from California and Washington while I picked a flight of reds entitled Bodacious Bordeaux.  Each flight came with a note card detailing the name & year of the wine along with the growing region and brief description.

We walked into Cru at the tail end of their happy hour, so with the happy hour menu in effect, we started with a couple of the happy hour specials.

First thing out of the kitchen was lamb chop lollipops paired with goat cheese, mint, a balsamic reduction, crispy prosciutto, and fig demi.  The lamb was cooked medium rare with a nice sear on the outside, and while the lamb itself was lacking in salt, the accompanying sauce provided the right amount of salt.


Along with the lamb came out goat cheese beignets.

While the "beignets" were closer to deep fried goat cheese balls, the batter was thick & smooth and the goat cheese inside melt in your mouth.  True to form, the honey drizzled on the plate and beignets was an excellent touch and the dish was really a steal at $3!

Sticking with the small plates theme, we moved on to a charcuterie plate complete with chorizo, salami, foie gras, prosciutto, olives, grainy creole mustard, slices of crusty bread, and cornichons.  Surprisingly we BOTH really enjoyed the foie gras spread over the bread and topped with the mustard, and the tiny olives were a nice touch of briny salt.  The miss on the board was the salami-it was clearly a cheap cut of deli salami that lacked any flavor and would have been better left off the plate.

After 3 dishes from the land, it was time to go to the sea with ahi tuna tartare, served on a base of avocado, cucumber, tomato, and olive tapenade.  The dish was a hit with very clean flavors and a nice chill on the fish, but the olive oil in the dish was phenomenal- a strange thing to note, but so true!

The service and overall experience at Cru was excellent, and proved to be a great first course before moving down the street to catch the 7:30 showing of Moneyball.  The movie hit 3.5/5 stars in our book due to a lack of character development, so all in all, a great Friday date night!

A Tale of Two Sausages

With the industrialization of the Eastern world and what Tom Friedman calls the Triple Convergence in his book The World is Flat, a significant amount of craft jobs where workers actually created products have gone away to countries where production costs are significantly much lower; therefore, in America there are fewer opportunities to buy products made a by a true master of his/her craft. It used to be you would buy a barrel from a cooper, leather goods from a tanner, and meat from a butcher.  Now a days you can get your leather and meat in a barrel size quantity at your one stop shop big box store (Wal-Mart, Costo, Target).  So in light of this, I find it extra special when you find true craftsman offering a chance to buy a quality product made by hand in small batches.  So using the rhetoric that you would buy a barrel from a cooper, in my mind it makes sense to buy sausage from a man who's last name is Link.

Donald Link is the Samuel L. Jackson of the culinary world; in short, he's a BAMF (if you have to ask, you don't want to know; if you know, wallets available here for $9.99).  Chef Link is the owner/co-owner of 4 New Orleans restaurants-Cochon, focused on traditional Cajun food with a masterful twist, Herbsaint, Link's upscale restaurant, Calcasieu, a private dining space named for Link's home Parish (aka County), and Cochon Butcher, a space adjacent to Cochon where Link sells homemade sausages, sauces, and sandwiches.  

Whether or not you respect the James Beard Foundation (I'm looking at you Tony Bourdain), it's hard to deny that their awards are typically bestowed upon on powerhouse, deserving chefs.  Link is no exception.  

Link won the James Beard Award for Best Chef South in 2007, his co-owner Steven Steyjewski won the James Beard for Best Cook South Award in 2011, and Link's Real Cajun cookbook won the James Beard Cookbook Award in 2010.  All that is fine and dandy, but what sets this Louisiana native aside from others is how as soon as the Government would let people enter Post-Katrina New Orleans, Link came back and began serving meals to those in need while keeping his staff on the payroll despite not being open for business.  While this seems trivial, ponder that while today there are 300 more restaurants in NOLA Post-Katrina, directly after the storm very few came back right away while it took others years to re-open.  If you're a TV series fan, Treme, an HBO drama,  is an entertaining and accurate piece on Post-Katrina New Orleans.

Elizabeth and my "last meal" in New Orleans after a long day of work and packing was at Cochon Butcher, and as I munched on my sandwich, kettle chips, and Diet Coke in a bottle, my eyes were drawn predominately to my beautiful wife, but occasionally they caught a glimpse of the meat cooler next to our table.  Needless to say, we walked out with one pound of smoked deer sausage, 4 pounds of boudin, a cooked Cajun pork & rice sausage, 2 jars of Cochon mustard, made with Abita beer, a bottle of Cochon hot sauce, and just over one pound of Chef Link's newest creation-hot dogs.  

As we waited at the bar of Cochon to buy a t-shirt, a guy next to us chatted us up about Cochon and Donald Link and mentioned how Link's hot dogs were the subject of a negotiation with a Major League Baseball team in regards to featuring them at their ball park.  While that's yet to be seen, anything sausage by Donald Link peaked my interest.  

Growing up 60 miles south of Chicago, the "correct way" to order a hot dog is "steam dog (boiled) Chicago Style"aka diced tomato, diced onion, neon green relish, pickle, celery salt, Polchman's mustard, pickle, sport peppers (for some of us)."  So as a matter of habit, we placed 2 hot dogs in a sauce pan, covered them with water, and brought them to a boil before boiling them for approx. 5 minutes.  

The end product was crisp yet juicy, with distinct flavors of meaty pork and earthy seasonings.  We covered our dogs with tomato, onion, Polchman's yellow mustard (Manteno, IL's pride & joy); admittedly, we forgot the relish & pickle, and didn't have access to sport peppers.   The hot dogs were unusually long, so here's to hoping Link comes out with a bun-length dog soon!

Always on the look out for interesting items at the grocery store, we picked up a couple of turkey-cilantro sausages at Central Market last week, and saw them not only as good choice for a dinner entree, but also a way to use up a couple bottles of Budweiser we inherited from a friend who brought an array of leftover beer from his housewarming party to a dinner party we had.

We emptied two King of Beers into our deep cast iron skillet and turned the burner to medium-high heat to create a hot tub for our sausage; we added the sausage, brought the liquid to a boil, and cooked the meat for approx. 30 minutes (about the time it took for us to get a temperature reading of 160 degrees with a meat thermometer).

We enjoyed our sausage accompanied by a salad with red onions and oranges and black quiona tossed with cilantro, diced onion, tomato, mushrooms, and garlic.  I missed a little on the quiona by not sauteing the garlic and mushrooms, a move that would have mellowed the garlic and softened the mushrooms.  The turkey-cilantro mix was a nice change from traditional pork and beef sausage and provided a for a quick & easy week night dinner!

"Bone Marrow, Pork Belly, Truffle Oil....These Are A Few of My Favorite Things"

Fried Chicken and Champagne....Why the hell not?-Max's Wine Dive

I'm not a big fried chicken or champagne fan, but both Liz & I are HUGE fans of Max's Wine Dive, a Houston/Austin/San Antonio restaurant trio that prides itself on "upscale comfort food in a relaxed setting." 

Last Friday was an off-Friday for us, so with a relaxing day off, we decided to do dinner out at Max's, after swearing it off after a bad brunch experience where we walked out after waiting 20 minutes past our reservation in a half-empty restaurant, but when I saw that roasted bone marrow was back on the menu, it was decidedly time to bury the hatchet.

We we're unable to secure a reservation, but decided to gamble on securing a seat at the bar, and after a rather odd cab ride with a cowboy hat wearing, semi-truck driving, pistol toting, militia member cab driver who kept his backscratcher in the passenger side visor, his confederate flag on the dash board, and his country & western loud on the radio.  Need I mention that after the ride we were ready for a glass of wine (ok, I induced and carried the conversation)!  As luck would have it we had two adjoining bar seats in less than 30 seconds!  We decided to start with 2 glasses of wine and a pair of appetizers.

Pictured above is the roasted bone marrow with garlic confit jam & house-baked Slowdough flat bread.  After one bite, Max's was back on the good list, rivaling Tafia for 1st place on my Houston restaurant ranking list.  The bread was soft, hot, and sprinkled with the perfect amount of coarse sea salt, but the bone marrow was simply amazing.  Not sure how to describe it if you've never had it, but think of it as a jelly flavored with meaty-goodness.  Bone marrow is a seasonal dish at Max's done during the Fall months (FYI-TX really doesn't have seasons), so it's here to stay for awhile!  

Pictured below is the equally outstanding Dublin Dr. Pepper Glazed Pork Belly, served skewered with Snyder's pretzels atop a bed of polenta.  The pork belly was crispy and sweet on the exterior, but the inside was juicy and soft.  A cool thing about Max's is that they feature on the menu where all of their food comes from, and for this particular dish, the pork and polenta (aka the corn meal) were both from TX, but the most interesting component was the Dublin Dr. Pepper.  Dublin Dr. Pepper?  Is that Ireland's version of Dr. Pepper?  Dublin, TX is home to the oldest Dr. Pepper bottling plant, but what sets it aside from mainstream Dr. Pepper is that the Dublin brew is made according to the original Dr. Pepper recipe with Imperial brand cane sugar (whereas the mainstream version uses high fructose corn syrup).  

After a glass of wine & the pair of appetizers, we decided on another glass of pinot grigio and an entree to split.  Oddly enough, we independently came to the decision to go with the Fried Egg Sandwich.  

While the picture doesn't do the sandwich justice, you'll have to take my word(s) that this is not the fried egg sandwich you make in your bathrobe while reading the paper and nursing a hangover on a Saturday morning.  Since the picture doesn't do it justice, I'll let Max's describe the sandwich.....

Three fried eggs drizzled with truffle oil, sea salt, applewood-smoked bacon, gruyere, bibb lettuce, tomatoes, and black truffle aioli on ciabatta pugliese with hand cut truffle chips.  

Liz will vouch that despite the bottle of white truffle oil in our pantry, I'm the first to advocate that truffle oil is often over-done and over-used, but Max's was spot on with the TO in this dish.  The richness of the  yolk, truffle oil, and black truffle aioli was tempered by the acidic tomato, thick strips of crisp bacon, and the cool bibb lettuce.  A bit messy, but a positive side-effect was the drizzling of egg yolk that peppered the potato chips.  On a sandwich of this magnitude, the thickness and composition of the bread is clutch, and the ciabatta stood up to the challenge.

So if you find yourself in Houston/Austin/San Antonio hungry and ready for a great dining experience, Max's Wine Dive is a must try spot!  Here's hoping for a Chicago outpost!

Double Dip

Hey Drew, are we doing a number theme on the post titles?  TBA, but in the mean time, let's talk dip.  I'll admit it, I'm a chip man.  I love chips-potato, pita, beet-doesn't matter.  But every chip needs a partner in crime, and dip is where it's at.  While dip is appropriate and encouraged to be consumed throughout the year, it tastes the best during college football season, so with a full schedule of college football on Saturday, it was time for dip.

Yes, that's Nathan Scheelhaase, Illinois sophomore quarterback who went 11/15 in the Illini's third straight victory over the then ranked #22 Arizona State Sun Devils.  Nathan, keep it up & there's always a bowl of dip for you at the Keiser house.


With Illinois playing a night game, we elected to watch the Michigan State v. Notre Dame game Saturday afternoon, and in honor of both teams, we started with something green:  guacamole.


Making guacamole starts at the grocery store level.  Avocados are a fruit/vegetable (?) that will continue to ripen after being harvested; however, with that said, picking avocados can be a bit of a crap shoot.  If you're planning to use your avocados at a later date, you can go with an avocado that is still hard to the squeeze (and put in a brown paper grocery sack to ripen quicker), but if you're using it right away, you'll want an avocado that is semi-mushy to the squeeze, but not overly so, or else the inside will have some areas that are black.  If you're making guacamole, while your at the store picking out the perfect avocados, also grab a white onion, limes, a couple of tomatoes (romas work great), one bunch of cilantro, and a jalapeno (if you're feeling saucy).

Our motto is Midwestern Mild when it comes to most cooking, so we left the jalapeno at the store for the "Native Texans" to buy and went with the essentials-2 ripe avocados, 2 vine tomatoes, lime juice, 1 bunch of cilantro, and a white onion.

After washing & drying the cilantro, we separated the leaves from the larger/thicker stems, and set about finely chopping the cilantro before dicing the onion and tomatoes; all three were then added to our mixing bowl along with the flesh of the avocados, easily removed by scoring the perimeter of the avocado with a sharp knife & removing the flesh with a spoon.  As for the brown pit in the middle, we removed it, but it's been said that leaving the pit in the finished product will help prevent browning.  I remember the first time I tried to make guacamole in 4th grade-the attempt was doomed to fail as the avocados were rock hard and we only had saltine crackers to eat the final product with ( a suggestion from the classic, red & white checkered Better Homes & Gardens cookbook), but what I remember most is peeling the avocados like a potato to remove the flesh.

With all the ingredients in the mixing bowl, mash the contents with a potato masher or a large fork until the desired consistency is reached.  Finish with black pepper, a healthy dose of kosher salt (to taste), and lime juice.  We thought we were ok using bottled lime juice, but this was false-despite claiming to be real lime juice, the bottled lime juice gave the final product an artificial taste, so we highly advocate for using real limes!

The final product was much like the Michigan State offensive-good attempt, but not a game winner.  The lesson learned here was two-fold:  practice what you preach and whenever possible, use fresh ingredients, two mantras I advocate, but failed to deliver upon in the guacamole.

With Notre Dame ending their 2 game skid to Michigan State, the lull between the 2:30 game and the 6:30 game provided us time to make a dip to take to watch the Illinois and Ohio State games at a friend's viewing party.  In the spirit of college football we decided on making buffalo wing dip, a recipe that a fraternity brother used to bring to Sigma Pi Superbowl parties (shout out to Decker!).

The full recipe makes a large quantity, so we halved the recipe for our party (therefore if you double our measurements, you'll get the full recipe).


Half way through the 3rd quarter of the MSU/ND game, we baked 2 chicken breasts in a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes, and when they cooled, chopped them into tiny pieces.  With the cutting board out, 1/2 a bunch of celery got a fine dice.

After the game we melted one 1/3 less fat bar of cream cheese, a 1/2 cup of ranch dressing, and 1 cup of Frank's Red Hot hot sauce in a medium sauce pan over low heat, stirring occasionally.  At this point, the real recipe calls for the melted ingredients to go in a crock pot with a the diced chicken & celery, along with cubed jack cheese, to simmer on low for 3-5 hours with an occasional stir.  Not wanting to travel with a crock pot, we modified the recipe by adding the chicken, celery, and 4 ounces of cubed Kraft Monterrey jack cheese to the sauce pan & melted the mix over low, low heat for 90 minutes.

If the end product is chunky, the recipe calls for a quick mash with a potato masher or stick blender, but our end result was smooth and creamy.  As Liz & I are part of the Illini nation, we brought blue corn tortilla chips to be served with our orange dip, but as the night wore on (and the Illini found the end zone more than ASU), I thought it might be fun to dye the celery and chicken blue to concoct a true Illini dip. The dip was a hit at the party and had a nice tang from the hot sauce.  When we usually make this, taking a que from Decker, we like to substitute the Franks for Buffalo Wild Wings Spicy Garlic hot sauce (available at $3.99/bottle at your local BDubs), but any favorite hot sauce will work well!


Well, the Bears got beat by the Saints and with that weekend comes to a close.  Have a great week everyone!

Tafia Trio

With a Friday off of work and clear, sunny skies, we decided to have lunch outside at our favorite Houston restaurant Tafia!

Tafia is a true farm to table restaurant owned by local chef Monica Pope, receipt of a 2007 James Beard nomination, a Food & Wine Top 10 chef, and the feature of an Ad Hoc post about chef inspired gelato.  You have to love a restaurant who's motto is "animals are treated well & don't do drugs; we start from scratch, using the best ingredients, mostly from around here."


Every Friday the restaurant offers a 3 course lunch for $22 with multiple choices for each course.  Trying to maximize the moment, Liz and I agreed to each get a different dish, a strategy that worked until dessert!


First Course


Ding Ding, and the bout begins!  Liz started with the portabella, heirloom bean puree, lavender black pepper pizzette and I the cornmeal-fried calamari with Thai dressing.






The pizzette was a little bit of a surprise as we were both expecting a mini-pizza topped with puree, but instead got warm pieces of pillowy-soft grilled flat bread and puree that was very similar to a hummus.  The flavors in the puree were interesting-the mushroom component to the dish provided a meaty taste and while a delicate flavor, we didn't get any lavender notes.  The calamari arrived with a loose and lightly fried cornmeal coating and a refreshing side of sauce.  The meat was a little chewy & would have benefited from a little more cooking, but the sauce provided a nice touch.


Round 1 Critique:  3/5


Second Course


Before our second course arrived, the waiter asked me if I wanted a refill on my iced tea, but seeing that I was drinking a Diet Coke, I mentioned that I was would like a Diet Coke, but instead got iced tea, BUT I was glad I did!  I'm not sure what Monica infuses in her iced tea, but the floral and vibrant taste it gave the iced tea was outstanding and negated the need for any sugar or sweetener.


For our second course, Liz ordered the Greek-style Longhorn burger with tzatziki sauce & caramelized red bell peppers and red onion while Drew ordered the braised Kobe beef short ribs with garlic gratin.

The burgers came out as a set of mini burgers on what were clearly homemade sourdough buns ( a win for us as if our wedding taught you anything, we LOVE mini sandwiches!).  The burgers were every thing a standard very good burger should be, but the tzatziki sauce, light, creamy, and kissed with lemon, was a rock star and tasted like it came out the backdoor of a Chicago Greektown restaurant.  The short rib was awesome, braised to the point where it was almost fork-tender, but had a great chew and flavor all the way through.  The garlic gratin was (rather obviously) full of garlic flavor, but also composed of what appeared to be diced fennel and bread crumbs; for a fennel opponent, it was good.  And last, but not surely not least, the pan sauce that accompanied the the short rib scored an 8/10 on the DDK gravy/ pan sauce/ au jus rating scale (so good I thought seriously about asking for a large side of sauce).


Round 2 Critique:  4/5


Third Course


I mentioned above that the game plan was to each get a different dish, but the plan went to the wayside when we saw Warm Huckleberry & Nectarine Crisp with Almond Whipped Cream on the menu.  Tempted yet?  If not, check out the pic below!

Warm.  Gooey.  Crumbly.  Balanced.  We both could go on and on.  The dish came out warm, and despite the list of ingredients, all of the individual flavors came through yet melded together perfectly. I didn't mention this to Liz, but at the time I was thinking if Monica could/would sell this by the sheet pan and how much that would cost!


Round 3 Critique:  5/5


Overall Experience


Good food only goes so far, so it would be incomplete to end this post without mentioning the service, decor, and all that goes into making a dining experience what it is.  The setting of our lunch transported us from the gritty downtown Houston area to a backyard terrace.  We sat in a 3 sided enclosure with a roof with large paving stones with rocks in between them as a floor.  Our service was a different story; we never received bread (when others did) and getting more beverages was a challenge.  In short our waiter was never around.


Overall Critique:  3.75/5


I don't think Tafia is capable of providing a bad experience, but our visit Friday at best limped over the "good" line.  In short, the appetizer course was a "should've been," the entree "spot on," and the dessert a "standout," but our experience ( and critique) proves the value of quality service in a restaurant.  Monica, keep doing what you're doing, and the Keisers will see you next month!

Momoo's Banana Bread - Guest Post by Liz

We had three browning bananas on our counter, and although this is the color I prefer my banana to be, I decided to use them to make banana bread for Drew and I to have for the week.

I like to use my grandmother’s recipe, whom my brother and I affectionately referred to as Momoo (pronounced MOM MOO), while the other cousins called her Grandma and didn’t like that the youngest cousins had made up this strange name that seemed to take precedence.

The last few times I made Momoo’s banana bread recipe I decided to alter it slightly. Drew came across a recipe that required whole wheat flour and so we had some of it sitting in our kitchen cabinets and the Fraker in me doesn’t like to waste, so I decided to halve the flour in the banana bread recipe with ¾ whole wheat flour and ¾ regular flour. Drew and I both couldn’t tell the difference and decided to use this combination going forward hoping there were some nutritious benefits. 

One other way to make it a bit healthier was to use ¾ cup of sugar instead of 1 cup. Again, we couldn’t tell a difference between leaving out a little sugar, so we continue to do that. Also, we learned from a cooking show that if you heat up the mashed up ripe bananas in microwave it releases more of their sugars and will naturally make the bread sweeter. You can also add 4 bananas instead of 3, which we have also tried.

Below is Momoo’s recipe, which as her recipes often were, is straight and to the point without a lot of guidance or description:

For some reason when I decide to make banana bread I have a lot on my mind or I loose focus. Which could be in part because I have made it many times before so I don’t think I need to concentrate as much. But almost every time I make it I don’t mix the ingredients in the right “order”. So this time I put in all of the dry ingredients together (including sugar) and then realized I should have started with mixing the softened butter (which I think is better off just completely melted for mixing purposes), eggs, bananas and sugar. I was able to salvage this a bit and scoop up the sugar from the top of the dry ingredients and add it over to the eggs, butter and banana mixture. So pictured below is the ingredients all mixed together before adding to the pan. I have messed it up almost every time, and it hasn’t made a taste difference yet!

After you have poured the mixture in a greased 5 by 9 bread pan you bake it for about 50 minutes uncovered.

And then you have delicious warm banana bread, which I forgot to take a picture of before I took my first piece! Enjoy!

Dinner by Dylan

Last Friday Liz and Drew flew into Chicago for a wedding, and headed to Drew's brother's and brother's girlfriend's apartment to drop their stuff before going out for drinks.  So after a long day work and traveling, it was a nice surprise to find that Dylan had made some dishes!


We started with a bottle of Cycles Gladiators cabernet sauvignon wine and a charcuterie plate, filled with pepper-crusted salami, green grapes, a variety of crackers, and a really creamy brie infused with blue cheese.  The cheese was outstanding-great brie taste tempered with just a hint of medium pungent blue cheese.

For Act II, Dylan created a couple of flat bread pizzas using plain naan, an Indian flat bread, as a base.  One pizza was a bruchetta pizza, complete with torn fresh basil, & diced tomato, fresh mozzarella.  The other pizza was topped with BBQ chicken and fresh mozzarella.

The pizzas were hot and crusty & the flavors of the toppings melded together nicely.  In short, a very thoughtful & tasty way to start our trip to Chicago!

Paging Doctor Corn Cob....

Drew read today in the Wall Street Journal that a hospital in Iowa recognized a disconnect between the patients they were serving and the predominantly foreign-born medical staff they employed; in short, the doctors at the hospital were having trouble connecting with the patients at the "bedside manner" level, resulting in a sub-par medical experience on both ends.  The hospital is working to solve this by mandating classes taught by two University of Northern Iowa sociologists who educate the doctors on topics covering the University of Iowa Hawkeyes sports teams, Midwestern dialect, and the importance of corn; homework assignments include directives to attend State and county fairs.  Drew often (half) jokes that he would love to go back to the University of Chief Illiniwek for a PhD in sociology, so Carle Hospital, if you're reading, can we strike a deal?!?! 

(Article Here)



So all that talk of Iowa corn is a nice segway into a Thomas Keller recipe we made last weekend while Liz and Drew were home in Champaign:  Creamed Summer Corn.

Liz and Drew started the recipe off right by shucking a dozen ears of fresh "Peaches & Cream" sweet corn straight from the Urbana Farmer's Market.

After the corn was shucked, it got a quick rinse in the sink where Drew took a vegetable brush to it to remove every last silk, a practice that garnered Drew some laughs and weird looks from the Merees.

So in all honesty, the recipe unintentionally got a "Ad Hoc" spin very quickly when Drew began to boil the ears of corn in batches.  According to the real recipe, the corn is not to be pre-boiled, but again, Drew's love of a new spin (read: lack of reading thoroughly) resulted in a new twist.

After cooking the corn in two batches, we let it cool, and Drew began slicing the corn off of the cob.  The real TK recipe starts here & calls for the chef to not only preserve the corn kernels, but also the corn "milk," the white liquid that drains out of the cob.  A quick trick to "milk the cob" is to flip the blade of your knife and run the dull side of the blade along the stripped cob over a bowl.

When all the corn cobs are sliced, melt 3 tablespoons of butter over medium heat before adding the corn, the juice of two limes, and salt & pepper to test.  The real recipe calls to cook the corn over medium-low heat for approx. 15 minutes or until all the liquid has evaporated and the corn is beginning to sizzle.  We cooked our about 5-7 minutes since we had pre-cooked the corn.  After the liquid soaked up into the corn, we added in 3/4 of a cup of heavy whipping cream, salt & pepper to taste, and chili powder to taste to balance the sweetness of the corn. 

Admittedly, this was not the best recipe to put an "Ad Hoc" spin, but the end result was good and well liked by the crowd we had for dinner.  But as I imagine they're teaching the doctors in Iowa, you can't go wrong with good, fresh corn!