Succotash

Steps

1. prep5 min
   ear stood upright in a wide bowl, knife run down the cob
   cut the kernels from the ears, then reverse the knife and scrape the stripped cob hard from top to bottom to collect the starchy milk left in the base of each kernel — it is a natural thickener and it is the difference between a fresh-corn succotash and a bag of corn in butter. Have the beans thawed and drained before anything hits the pan; a frozen bean dropped into a hot skillet is a shot of cold water at exactly the wrong moment. Frozen corn and frozen limas are honest year-round ingredients and this recipe is built to work with them; cut-from-the-cob corn is the summer upgrade, not the requirement.
2. saute5 min
   medium, in the oil and half the butter, until translucent and slumped
   onion softened until it has lost its opacity and gone soft at the edge, with the garlic added only for the last minute. Garlic in from the start is finished and beginning to burn in the four minutes raw onion needs, and burnt garlic is a flavour that carries through a whole pan. If you are using bacon or salt pork, it renders here first, over lower heat, and its fat replaces the oil.
3. saute6 min
   raised to medium-high, spread to one layer, left undisturbed a minute at a time
   + diced bell pepper + corn, spread out and then largely left alone, stirred only every minute or so. This is the step the whole dish turns on. Corn is mostly water and sugar, and the sugar at the cut face of a kernel caramelises against hot metal into something toasty that raw corn does not have — but only if there is bare pan for the released water to evaporate from. Pile it in and stir constantly and the skillet becomes a steamer: the kernels sit in their own liquid, nothing colours, and the finished dish is sweet, wet and one-note. Stop while the kernels still burst rather than squash.
4. saute3 min
   gently folded, just heated through
   + lima beans, turned over a few times until steaming. They are already cooked, so this is warming and nothing else. Beans stirred hard or cooked on split their skins and release starch that clouds the pan and glues the corn together — the entire reason for the sequence is that each component arrives when it needs to and leaves the pan intact and identifiable. If tomatoes are going in, they go here too and only long enough to soften at the edge.
5. season2 min
   off the heat, pan pulled from the burner first
   + the remaining butter + salt + pepper + torn basil + lemon juice, stirred through the residual heat. Butter added off the flame stays an emulsion of fat and water and tastes like butter; butter melted at the start is a cooking medium whose flavour has largely cooked away, which is why the source set divides it deliberately rather than putting it all in at once. Soft herbs and acid come off-heat for the same reason: basil's aromatics are volatile and go up the extractor within seconds of hitting a hot pan, and heat flattens lemon into something merely sour. Taste and correct now — corn's sweetness varies enormously and the salt that suited one batch will be short for the next.