Mexican Street Corn Pasta Salad

Perfect Pairing: Grilled dinner

Last summer I went to a food and wine festival at Lincoln Park in Chicago.  Chris gave me the tickets for my birthday and I was SO excited.  The morning of the festival I woke up feeling gnarly and not at all like going to a food festival, but I persevered because that is my mecca.  I saw demos from some of my favorite chefs like Rick Bayless and Stephanie Izard and tried lots of good food and wine.  Fortunately, I felt better as the day went on and we had a great time!

One of the best bites of food I had all day was a truffled Mexican street corn.  Holy corn Batman, it was delicious.  I may have gone back for seconds… and thirds.  It was a small piece of sweet corn rolled in some glorious mayonnaise mixture then topped with parmesan and shaved truffles.  I just can’t even describe it. 

Last summer my cousin’s wife made an extraordinarily good Mexican Street Corn dip for our annual Lake House Chef’s Challenge.  It was a serious crowd pleaser.  So, ever since the dip and the festival corn I have been wanting to try a variation on Mexican street corn.

Enter Mexican Street Corn Pasta Salad!  Grilled corn and grilled scallions are mixed with pasta in a tangy sauce and then combined with cilantro, parmesan and avocado.  It is really tasty. 

If you have not grilled your scallions you are missing out.  It totally changes the flavor.  They are fantastic on tacos.

This salad is so not the typical summer pasta salad and would be a hit at any party.  There is some prep involved so I think it is paired best with a simple grilled entrée like hamburgers or brats. 

I wonder what else you can do with Mexican street corn.  Goals!

One year ago on Perfecting the Pairing: Simple Fruit Dip

Two years ago on Perfecting the Pairing: Avocado and Strawberry Toast with Feta and Honey

Three years ago on Perfecting the Pairing: Salted Peanut Bars

Four years ago on Perfecting the Pairing: Fruit Pizza Cookies

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Quinoa Produce Salad

Perfect Pairing:  Summer meal

I don’t think you can have too many good quinoa salad recipes.  This Quinoa Produce Salad is perfect for summer. 

It finally feels like summer around here!  I had a wonderful weekend celebrating Father's Day and all things summer.  My dad came home from his week of fishing in Manada (more appropriate than Canada).  Apparently he caught so many fish his hands hurt from reeling and cleaning the fish.  We did all of our favorite warm-weather activities like boating, swimming (more like bobbing on floats), sunset cruises, grilling, and doing everything we can outside.  It was a perfect weekend.

Quinoa Produce Salad is filled with fresh ingredients like multi-colored grape tomatoes, corn, green onions, and basil.  It is simply dressed with a little olive oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper.

You wouldn’t think that something so simple could be so tasty.  I love the slight sweetness from the corn and nuttiness of the quinoa.  You could easily adapt this recipe by adding other favorite produce like roasted asparagus, edamame, roasted peppers, or other fresh herbs like tarragon or thyme.

This healthy and delicious salad is going to be a regular on my summer menu!

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Creamy Edamame and Corn Succotash

Perfect Pairing:  Chipotle Cheddar Cheese

Airport food has come a long way.  During my youth I would fly out of the Moline International Airport.  I am not quite sure how they can call it an international airport, maybe someone went to Canada once from there.  It is a very small airport filled with very friendly employees, free parking (at least it used to be), and one baggage carrousel.  There was one restaurant option right before security that basically served diner food. They have totally remodeled the airport in recent years so I might be wrong on some of this information. 

Nowadays I fly out of O’Hare where there are endless food options.  Unfortunately, that also comes with about 10x the hassle when compared to flying out of a small airport.  San Francisco’s airport (SFO) has a new terminal that is filled with awesome options.  Cat Cora and Tyler Florence both of restaurants there, as well as an amazing candy store, and Pinkberry frozen yogurt.  You don’t mind killing time in that terminal.

I recently flew out of SFO after an amazing trip to California and had some time to kill in the new terminal.  I decided to get lunch at Tyler Florence’s restaurant.  It is a relatively casual place that serves pizza, salads, and rotisserie options.  I had a salad but I was really eyeing the creamy succotash side dish.  I decided to try my hand at it when I got home.  I think I waited a whole two days.

Google tells me that succotash is a dish of corn and lima beans.  Well, mine has one of those things.  I subbed lima beans for edamame, added roasted red peppers, and a spicy cheese sauce.  My original plan was to use shredded pepper jack cheese in the sauce but while grocery shopping I spotted a chipotle cheddar cheese and decided to go with that.  I loved the smoky flavor of the chipotle peppers, but pepper jack would also be great in this dish.  This is a great way to spruce up your standard veggie side dish.  I loved it!

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Corn Casserole and a Tale of Two Lizards

Perfect Pairing:  Potluck

Oh the famous corn casserole.  I can’t even count how many times I have made this dish, definitely more than anything else I have ever made.  It makes an appearance at any dinner of importance at my parents'.  It is just so delicious and easy!  It literally takes under five minutes to prepare.  It is the perfect dish to bring to any potluck or family dinner.  There is one recent family dinner that I would like to focus on today.  Before I do that I need to give a little background…

My parents went on a trip to Hilton Head to visit some good friends.  While there my mom got super crafty with her friend and made all sorts of arrangements for their new house.  I guess she was inspired to bring back a little of the south.  On the last morning in South Carolina she picked up some Spanish moss outside of a breakfast restaurant.  Mom packed it up in the trunk and they were on their merry way.

A couple of days (and a thousand miles) later my parents unpacked the car back in the Midwest.  The Spanish moss was in a bag ready to go downstairs and mom noticed a twig that was not part of the moss.  She went to grab it to throw it away and it moved!  It was a LIZARD!!  Apparently I inherited my overwhelming fear of anything reptilian from my mother because I am told she screamed like she was face to face with a python.  Oh what I would give to witness that scene.  From a safe distance, of course.

After my dad stopped laughing he agreed to trap the little guy but said my mom had to help corner him.  Well, that was not happening.  She called the neighbor and the two manly men wrangled the lizard.  Here he is after being captured.  Not exactly tiny!

 

Fast forward a week to Easter Sunday.  I was home with my boyfriend and busy cooking a big Easter meal for the fam.  I commented to my mom how I could not believe I had never photographed the famous corn casserole, so before dinner I had an impromptu photo session with my boyfriend’s help (he was in charge of the spoon).  I even had an audience outside the window.

 

Apparently my audience was larger than I thought.  We were all enjoying Easter dinner and my dad said, “oh, Linda, there is another lizard on the window.”  My mom and I are VERY used to my dad making jokes like this so we giggled politely and went back to our dinner.  He laughed and said, “no, I am serious this time.”  Sure enough, there was another lizard on the window!  Cue the irrational screaming. 

 Easter dinner was put on hold while we (by “we” I mean the males in the room) dealt with lizard #2.  Once everything calmed down we had to laugh thinking about how the lizard must have been inches away from me while I was photographing the corn casserole.  Then we remembered my mom took a picture of me taking pictures. 

 Yep, there he is hanging out on the flower!  I can’t even imagine what kind of heart failure I would have endured if he jumped on the corn at that moment.

 We are all really hoping that lizards only travel in twos.  Yikes. 

 

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Tortilla Soup

Perfect Pairing:  Your favorite salsa

Fall = Soup weather.  Am I right or am I right? 

I think it is safe to say that I have probably made this recipe more than anything else on my site.  Every time I make it I am reminded how delicious and easy it is.  You can have dinner on the table in less than 20 minutes with this recipe. 

I have been at the grocery store many times trying to think what to make for dinner and end up grabbing these ingredients because they are easy to remember, easy to find, cheap, and healthy.  Once you get the cans open you are halfway done.  It really is so simple.  I usually get rotisserie chicken from the store so I don’t even have to cook the chicken at home.

The fat free refried beans make this soup thick, so it feels decadent but it is actually full of fiber and nutrients.  It is incredibly filling and satisfying.

The Perfect Pairing for this recipe is your favorite brand of salsa.  I really like spicy food so I tend to go for the “hot” variety, but you may want to start out with mild or medium if you are not a fan.  The salsa adds a lot of flavor to the soup so it makes sense to find one that you really like and use that in the recipe.  I think my favorite is Paul Newman’s chunky hot salsa.  The last time I made this soup I was in a hurry at the store and somehow grabbed chunky peach salsa.  I didn’t realize it until after it was in the soup.  Not going to lie, it was tasty!  There was a bit of a sweet undertone to the spicy soup.     

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Summer Corn Salad

Perfect Pairing: Slotted spoon

Oh friends, I have a treat for you. 

I am having a hard time coming up with the words to tell you how delicious this salad is. 

I am the daughter of a farmer and during late summer we have many meals that consist of just sweet corn.  It does not get much better than good sweet corn right out of the field. 

It is hard to improve on straight up sweet corn, butter, salt, and pepper, but I think this salad is up to the task.  Adding crispy bacon, grape tomatoes, basil, and avocado definitely does not hurt!

The Perfect Pairing for this salad is a slotted spoon.  There is nothing fancy about a slotted spoon but it is a great tool for this recipe.  You will need to remove the bacon from the grease to drain, and the easiest way to do that is with a slotted spoon.  Same thing with the onions that have been cooked in the bacon grease.  Yep, they are cooked in the bacon grease.  They don’t suck.

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Corn and Avocado Salsa

Perfect Pairing:  Danza Kuduro- Don Omar and Lucenzo

I absolutely love summer in Chicago.  I want to soak up every minute of it and I always worry that it is going by too fast and I am missing something.  Everything is in bloom, everyone is friendly and in a good mood.  Summer is the time for barbeques and al fresco dining.  I am trying to take full advantage of the weather by having as many get togethers on my patio as possible. 

This salsa is perfect for any summer party.  The ingredients pair really well together and just taste like summer.  It is different from your standard salsa because there are no tomatoes but I like having the bulk of the dip be corn and avocado.  It reminds me of the corn salsa at Chipotle restaurant.  The corn is sweet and crunchy and the avocados are creamy and rich.  It makes a big batch but would be great leftover on some grilled chicken or fish.

The Perfect Pairing for this salsa is Danza Kuduro by Don Omar and Lucenzo.  I first heard this song at a Zumba class and I was obsessed with figuring out what it was so I could download it.  As soon as this song starts playing I feel like dancing and eating salsa.  I may or may not do the Zumba routine in my living room when it comes on.  It is also great on the treadmill when you need a jumpstart. 

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Risotto with Corn, Roasted Peppers, and Pepper Jack Cheese

Perfect Pairing:  Ladle

Risotto is such a lovely thing.  I just had the best risotto of my life on a recent work trip to Portland at a restaurant called Metrovino.  This stuff was insanely good.  It was a mushroom risotto with shitake and oyster mushrooms and truffled mascarpone.   We had it as a shared appetizer, which was perfect, because I think it would have been way too rich as a main course.  I don’t know what they put in it, but it was out of this world.  I probably don’t want to know.  Restaurants sneak in so much unhealthy stuff.

Risotto with Corn, Roasted Peppers, and Pepper Jack Cheese is relatively light in comparison to the heavenly mushroom concoction I had in Portland.  There is no butter, cream, or mascarpone cheese.  I have been making this recipe for years and it is one of my favorites.  It is a little spicy from the pepper jack cheese and the hot sauce, slightly sweet from the corn, and balanced out by the fresh green onions.

Risotto can be a little daunting.  It is all about the liquid/stirring method.  I have no idea if I am preparing my risotto in the correct way.  No doubt, risotto purists would have something to say to me when I get distracted in my kitchen and forget to stir the rice, or add more than the appropriate amount of liquid.   Oh well!  All I know is that I am always pleased with the result. 

The Perfect Pairing for this risotto recipe (or any risotto recipe) is a ladle.  You have to add a small amount of liquid to the rice in intervals and then stir it until it is almost completely absorbed, and then repeat the process until the rice is cooked and creamy.  The simple ladle is the perfect tool since it is usually about ½ cup measure.

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