It may look like some kind of underwater sea creature, but the side that accompanies Paul Liebrandt’s duck leg in his “Flavors of Summer” dish at NYC's Corton is actually a “corn sponge.”

Liebrandt wanted to pair his duck leg with corn, but didn’t want a heaping pile of kernels or clumsy cob dominating the plate. So he came up with an intriguing way to shape it: “The idea was to make something like a cornbread but extremely light,” he says. Here he explains how he prepares the dish, and you can watch him in action in the video above.

“To make the sponge I take fresh sweet corn, freeze-dried corn, milk, egg yolk with corn stock (which I make from the cob), whole eggs, flour, salt, sugar, pepper and a little touch of extra virgin olive oil. I blend it all together on high speed to make a génoise mix. I work that mix through a sieve, to strain out any un-emulsified corn, into a bowl. I pour that into a siphon canister, and gas it up with four canisters of nitrous dioxide, which aerates the mix to give it a soufflé like texture. I shake the siphon, then shoot that into a little plastic cup, which has been sprayed with a touch of cooking oil, and am careful not to fill it to the top so that there’s room for the sponge to expand. I cook those sponge-filled cups in the microwave for about 30 seconds, turn it upside down to let the steam rise to the top, then let it rest for a while before I pull it out. What emerges is a light, bubbly corn sponge, made à la minute, and ready to serve.”

– Kathleen Squires