Sweet corn, bean, and tomato salad
A
couple of years ago, a friend served a salsa that was so good it
tempted even me --- a non-salsa-eater --- to go back for seconds.
The salsa was full of fresh corn and tomatoes, and I figured with a
little tweaking it could be turned into a less spicy salad suitable to
be eaten on its own. Here's the result --- a quick, in-season
dish that is also delicious.
- 1 c. fresh sweet corn (2 to 3 large ears)
- 1.75 c. beans (black or pinto are best, pre-cooked)
- 2 to 3 large tomatoes
- 1 medium sweet pepper (optional)
- 1 to 2 cucumbers (optional)
- 1.5 c. loosely packed green onion tops (or about a quarter of an onion, finely chopped)
- 0.5 to 1 tsp chili powder (or finely minced fresh hot peppers. The smaller amount makes a relatively mild dish, the latter a tangy one.)
- 2 tbsp lemon juice (or lime juice)
- salt and pepper to taste
Fill a pot with water
and bring it to a boil as you harvest the sweet corn from your
garden. Drop the cleaned ears into the water and lift them out
nearly immediately (30 seconds or less). Cut the kernels off the
ear with a sharp knife, then run the back of the knife down the cob to
pull out the sweet juices left behind.
Chop the tomatoes,
peppers, cucumbers, and green onions and add them to the sweet
corn. Add the beans, chili powder, lemon juice, salt, and
pepper. We're not fans of cumin or cilantro, but this is the kind
of dish that could use either or both if you like the flavor.
Marinate in the fridge
for an hour or two to meld the flavors, then pour off the excess
juices. Serve as a side dish for burritos, fajitas, quesadillas,
or even pork chops and rice (as I did.)
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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That's not a dumb question at all --- I was considering mentioning that in the post, but thought it was already too long (as usual.) That's a Mexican Sour Gherkin, a small, cucumber-like vegetable (which I put down as cucumbers in the recipe.) We're giving them a shot since they're immune to a lot of the molds that take out our cucumbers. Of course, this year, our cucumbers have done awesome due to the high heat and low rainfall (and succession planting) so we didn't really need them, but Mark likes the gherkins. They're cute and bite-sized, but taste a bit different than a cucumber to my tongue. (A bit more sour, as the name suggests.)
The downside is low productivity. We planted a few Mexican Sour Gherkin plants with our other cucumbers this spring, and they didn't start bearing until the others had kicked the bucket. Even now, four little plants only give us a handful of fruits once a week or so. Not what I'd recommend filling your garden with if you only have a tiny bit of space. But they're pretty and climb well, so you could probably stick them into a flower bed out front and no one would know they were vegetables.