You know, I'm right there with you on the sacrilege part, but nowadays I microwave pasta all the time. You need to use a non-starchy pasta for this to work. I use plain store-bought Barilla Plus because I love it anyway. For fresh pasta, you could try a small experiment; I've never tried with freshly-made pasta.
It takes less time than boiling on the stove for me because I do this:
- Fill up the electric kettle with water and turn it on.
- I use a 1/2 gallon Pyrex measuring cup as my "pot", and I put an inch or so of water in that and pop it in the microwave for four minutes to warm it up.
- When the water's boiling in the kettle and the oven timer expires, I take out the Pyrex container, add the pasta and a little oil and some salt (optionally a little vinegar), and then pour in the boiling water to cover by an inch or so.
- Dumpling-like pasta (rotini or penne) take about 8:30 to cook on high (I've got I think an 1100 watt oven; experiment); spaghetti 5:30, thin spaghetti 4:30.
I know it sounds like a horrible sin, but I started doing it when I needed to cook small portions of pasta for my kids. I tried it myself, and realized that I could tell absolutely no difference from the results I got in my big pasta pot. When I need to boil a lot of pasta (like 2 14oz boxes) I still use the big pot of course, but a pound or less actually cooks up perfectly fine. My pasta cooker is enormous and takes a long time to come up to the boil.
Now once I tried this (not thinking clearly, obviously) with some very starchy, fancy pasta, and it did not work at all. But maybe because it's got so much extra protein, Barilla Plus comes out absolutely fine. (It's good for you too.)
edit — Here's an update: I still do this, but recently one of the seemingly endless succession of microwave ovens I've had recently died, and I'm pretty sure it's because it somewhat frequently overheated while doing this very thing (cooking pasta). Now I don't blame the technique, really, since an oven should probably be designed with the possibility of hot stuff being inside of them for some periods of time, but be warned. (It overheated probably 10 times or so over the course of a couple years before dying, so it was right about at what I find to be typical end-of-life anyway.)
Microwave candy recipes are very fast and easy. They tend to be only a little different in flavor than the stove top versions in my experience. There seems to be a little less depth of flavor.
The recipes usually call for short periods of microwaving and frequent stirring. As far as the cooking times- I have to follow the recipe as I have no way of measuring the temperature in the microwave.
I personally have had great success with peanut brittle recipes (which get hotter than caramel):
http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/microwave-peanut-brittle-2/Detail.aspx
A cursory google search found several recipes for caramel but I have not tried them personally.
Best Answer
I've done it in the husk, when it's fresh (ie, the husk isn't dried out), but I don't like the grassy flavors that the husk imparts.
My neighbor's clued me into a box of dry wax paper sheets to cover food for the microwave (so I can be lazy and not have to clean the microwave as often), so I wrap the corn in it after it's been husked and the silk removed. I just roll in around the corn, twist the ends like the paper wrapping on taffy, then microwave it for a few seconds.
I haven't done it recently, so I can't remember exact times (and the wattage of microwaves differ, anyway) ... you just want to warm it through, though. If you were going to try to get it hot, I'd consider dropping to medium power for a much longer time, so you don't overly cook the outside, as I vaguely recall having an incident once.