It's time to say goodbye to corn. It's been seven great days of corn recipes and I know we'll all be sad to see it end. But sweet summer corn will be around for at least another month so the end of this series doesn't have to mean the end of corn for any of us (in this hemisphere!).

For this last of my corn recipes I am going to do a corn brulee. It's a corn-sweetened custard with whole kernels topped with spicy candied bacon and served with a very savory tomato sorbet.

Although the custard is made sweet with the infusion of corn, this is not what I'd consider a dessert. In fact I am serving mine as a first course and my brother Grant is pairing this custard with Vouvray.

But before we get to the wine let's recap this madcap week of corn recipes. It's hard for me to pick a favorite, so here they are in reverse chronological order: Fresh Corn & Sun Dried Tomato Angel Hair Pasta, Old Fashioned Corn Chowder, Corn & Zucchini Fritter Stacks with Bacon and Avocado, Seared Scallops with Succotash, Grilled Chicken with Raw Corn & Grilled Bread Salad.

We started with Grilled Corn with Feta & Lime. It's the only on-the-cob recipe I presented this week and I saved its mention for last because I thought I'd end this week of corn with some valuable tips on removing corn from the cob. Of course they sell devices for just such a chore, but I personally don't like to have tools cluttering up my drawers that only have one job in life. So I rely on a chef's knife to get the job done.

Okay who is Claire Robinson and why is she stealing all my best ideas? It is particularly annoying because somehow she has figured out a way to steal all my best ideas before I even have them. Now that’s nefarious!

Last year I made Chili Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies. They were an excellent inspiration I’d had while nibbling on a candy bar from Lindt. It was a chili chocolate candy bar made from very dark chocolate and a hint of heat in the form of chili powder.

It was a sumptuously interesting bite of chocolate too, and I immediately knew it would find its way into a cookie from my kitchen. Though I had enjoyed chili-infused chocolate before during my travels in Mexico, this Lindt version was the first time I had seen this combination of flavors north of the border– in a nationally available brand.

I was very pleased with those cookies and I recently had the hankering to make them again. But, you know what? I nailed those cookies the first time I made them. They were no challenge to me at all. I craved a chocolaty, chili-induced challenge. And then, at that precise moment it hit me… just like the Chili Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe the idea for another chili chocolate recipe popped into my head fully formed. Chocolate Chili Dipped Strawberries!

Pie.

Fresh fruit pie. We all aspire to that perfect triangle of sweet summer perfection. But too many of us fall flat in our goals.

Sure part of the equation is crust. Lard? Shortening? Butter? How cold? How crumbly? How to properly roll it out? There is room for endless debate. But the pastry is a debate I leave for another day.

Because today I want to talk filling– specifically fruit filling.

But first let me set the stage. Perfect pie is like porn; you know when you see it. You often sense it before you see it too. That’s because perfect pie starts with a fresh baked aroma. Then the pie arrives with its sugar bejeweled crust sparkling in the sunlight. Underneath that crust oozes a luscious filling, still tart enough to remind you of the fresh fruit that went into the crust in the first place.

Hit those few marks and there is a good shot that you are in the presence of a great piece of pie. It’s the simple perfection that gives it away. But it’s the complexity of taste and texture that makes it sublime.