Instructions

1. Cut the kernels off fresh cobs rather than reaching for tinned or frozen corn. This is a raw recipe and the sweetness of a just-cut cob is the whole flavor, where tinned corn brings brine and a cooked taste with it.
2. Blend the corn and yellow pepper on their own first, until almost smooth. The pepper holds most of the water in this batter and has to be fully broken down before anything absorbent joins it.
3. Add the cashews, flax meal, lime juice, chili powder and salt, and blend only until it is spreadable. Worked too long, flax meal turns slimy and the batter stops holding a shape at all.
4. Spread it on parchment paper-lined trays in a single direction, working end to end. Batter pushed back and forth picks up ridges, and every ridge is a thick spot that stays soft.
5. Start at 115 °F for 1 hour. That opening stage sets the surface quickly, which matters with a batter this wet and this sweet, because standing corn puree begins to ferment in a warm machine.
6. Drop to 105 °F and continue for 6 hours, sliding the slab off the parchment paper onto mesh as soon as it holds together. Until you do, the underside is doing nothing at all.
7. Snap the sheet into chips while it is part dry and still slightly flexible. Leave it until the end and it breaks wherever it likes rather than where you want it to.
8. They are ready when a chip clicks as it breaks and shows no darker, denser band at the break. Any that bend go back out on a tray — corn chips stay soft in the middle long after they look finished.
9. Store them airtight in the cupboard for a fortnight. They soften faster than a baked chip because nothing here was ever cooked hard, so a short run back in the machine will revive a limp batch.