(Side note: We have had a few requests for a subscription option and just wanted to let you know we have one now.  It’s at the bottom of our left-hand sidebar.) Now onto the blog…

This past weekend was spent in Massachusetts with A’s family.  From here on out we will call her parents The Cardiac King and Queen on account of their excellent Hearts games, but we digress…

To give you a sense of what a weekend with The CK&Q means food-wise, you should know that when A was in elementary school, whenever it was her turn to host “snack week”, kids seemed to “forget” their lunches. Getting the four of us together — four adults who love to cook and eat and drink — was an embarrassment of riches to which everyone contributed.  We drank delicious red wine from 1995, grilled juicy, marbled, T-Bone steaks, fried up black bean and cotijo quesadillas, eagerly consumed chocolate cake, marinated and grilled an enormous cut of salmon, ate decadently cheesy omelets, drenched shrimp with hearty cocktail sauce,  and offered our Plebeian Mac and Cheese to willing taste-testing cousins, aunts and uncles, while celebrating a 98th birthday. Yes, A’s “Gram” is 98.

One of our favorite dishes from the weekend was made with The CQ who found the recipe we used as our base and made most of the creative decisions and tweaks that made it so incredibly tasty.

Summer Salad with Corn, Tomatoes and Black Beans

Based on a recipe from Epicurious

(Serves 6 as a side)

6 tbsp fresh lime juice

4 tbsp olive oil

30 oz canned black beans, rinsed and drained

1 cup grilled corn kernels (about 2 ears)

1 giant tomato seeded and chopped

4 scallions, minced

2 pinches of cayenne (or more to taste)

4 tbsp minced cilantro

1 tsp cumin

2 cloves of garlic

First, juice the limes and combine with oil and salt to taste.  Whisk together.

Second, prepare the separate salad ingredients.  Rinse and drain the black beans.  Mince the scallions and seed and chop the tomato.  Wash and mince the cilantro and combine all of the above ingredients.

Third, grill the corn.  We used a technique we saw on Smitten Kitchen (for a different recipe, but it can apply here as well) a few weeks back, and grilled the corn on the stovetop.  It worked wonderfully.  The methodology is pretty straight-forward: shuck the corn, light the burner, place the corn on the burner and attend to it.  Keep rotating the cob so that it roasts evenly.  A word of warning is that the kernels may pop and spit and splatter their juices.  This is not the job for a child or someone too opposed to messes, but we do recommend you try this at home.

The corn is done when the light yellow has turned to a dark yellow and when a good amount of the kernels are blackened.  Let it cool, cut the kernels off the cob, and combine with the other ingredients.  Add the vinaigrette.

Toss and serve.

It appears that we are currently addicted to both corn and tomatoes, but we promise that one day we will change it up (and by “one day” we mean when the summer is over).  Please be patient.

Related posts: