Category: Sides

Fresh Corn Salad w/ Tomatoes & Basil

Post author By StreamingGourmet
Post date June 28, 2009
7 Comments on Fresh Corn Salad w/ Tomatoes & Basil

Since local corn is back in season, corn salad is back on the menu here at StreamingGourmet. I can’t get enough of the stuff and even my kids like it. I’ve kept my corn salad simple. I like to let the vegetables speak for themselves (i.e., there’s no oil in my recipe). The key is to keep the corn crisp by boiling it for only three minutes and promptly removing it from the water. Fresh basil is the other key ingredient here. My entire kitchen smelled great while I was putting this salad together.

Ingredients

4 ears fresh corn, shucked
1/2 pint cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1/2 small onion, diced finely
1 Tablespoon minced fresh basil
1 teaspoon salt
A few spritzes of fresh lemon juice

Method

1. Bring a large stockpot of water to boil. Add corn and boil for 3 minutes. Remove corn from water and place on a platter to cool.

2. Dice the onion using a mandoline on the finest dice setting. On my mandoline, I put the onion in the safety holder, sliced it thinly then swiped through perpendicular to my slices.

3. Once the corn is cool, slice it off into a large bowl. Break up the slices into kernels gently, leaving some big chunks, but not too big. Add the tomatoes, onion, and basil and toss to distribute everything evenly. Add salt and lemon juice and toss again.

Served chilled or at room temperature.

Serves 4

Scroll Down for More Corn Salad Recipes
from Around the Food Blogosphere

Other Great Corn Salad Recipes from Around the Food Blogosphere

1. Elise Bauer at Simply Recipes has a few great recipes. One of them is Grilled Corn Salad. It’s got a Southwest twist with cilantro, chili peppers and cumin.

2. Chuck at Sunday Night Dinner wrote a post last year called Spicy Fresh Corn Salad – A Taste of Yellow 2008 – The post was in support of the Lance Armstrong Foundation and features a simple corn salad with a spicy Thai chili pepper kick.

3. Kevin at Closet Cooking has a recipe for Avocado and Sweet Corn Salad. He’s added a creamy salsa verde dressing that looks great.

4. Chef John over at Foodwishes has produced a video Red Pepper and Corn Salad Recipe. For the recipe, visit Foodwishes. You can watch the video here.

Red Pepper and Corn Salad -Foodwishes

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Tags corn, elise, foodwishes, salad, simply recipes

Produce Sides Uncategorized Video How-to

Tyler Florence’s Creamed Spinach

Post author By StreamingGourmet
Post date June 22, 2009
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Creamed Spinach w/ Porterhouse Steak

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I discovered this video a few days after posting my version of Creamed Spinach. There are some similarities. We both use fresh nutmeg. We both add cheese. He adds Parmesan. I add Gruyère. I made a roux first. He thickened his cream by cooking it down. The revelation I want to try next time? Chopping the raw spinach before adding it to the cream. What are your secrets?

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Produce Sauces Sides Uncategorized Vegetarian

Creamed Spinach w/ Gruyère

Post author By StreamingGourmet
Post date June 17, 2009
5 Comments on Creamed Spinach w/ Gruyère

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It’s Gruyère week here at StreamingGourmet. I just can’t get enough of the stuff. I guess it’s also heavy cream week. Sorry! But since I bought these items for the Tarragon Chicken dish the other day, I’m determined not to waste them.

I became a fan of creamed spinach while waiting tables at the now defunct Ingleneuk Tea House in Swarthmore, PA. I was a vegetable girl there in 1991. As the main dishes were served, I offered each guest one of the evening’s side dishes from a large bowl I carried from table to table. I regularly ladled out maccaroni and cheese, stewed tomatoes, or creamed spinach. The restaurant served family-style meals from its opening in 1916 until its demise in a fire in 2000. With whom do I share the distinction of having served vegetables at the Ingleneuk? That would be none other than James A. Michener, a 1929 graduate of Swarthmore College. Swarthmore is a dry town, so there never were any restaurants of consequence there. Renato’s pizza and the Ingleneuk were the extent of the culinary scene in the early nineties. Except, come to think of it, for Occasionally Yours, a little café and catering company that served very decent food.

So it was at the Ingleneuk that I first learned about adding fresh grated nutmeg to creamy dishes like macaroni and cheese and creamed spinach, an addition I am quick to include in these dishes today.

Creamed Spinach
2 – 4 servings

Ingredients

2 Tablespoons butter
1 medium yellow onion, diced or 3/4 cup minced shallots
(For more flavor, add garlic too – Emeril does)
2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup whole milk
1 6 oz bag pre-washed baby spinach
pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
1 Tablespoon freshly grated Gruyère cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Heat milk and cream over low heat in a small saucepan. Make sure the milk doesn’t get scalded on start to boil. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large, deep frying pan over medium-high heat. Add diced onion and sautée until the pieces are starting to turn brown, about 6 minutes. (You could cook them more gently until softened, but I like the nutty, sweet flavor that results from browning them in the butter). Reduce the heat to medium and add the flour. Mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon and allow flour, butter and onion mixture to brown for 3 minutes. This is a roux and is the basis for so many cream sauces (including my favorite mac n cheese sauces).

2. Whisk in the heated milk. Reduce heat and stir continuously while incorporating. Add pinch of nutmeg and blend. Simmer gently until sauce thickens. Add Gruyère and stir until completely melted and blended. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour the raw spinach directly into the pan (this might break some rules, but it sure simplifies things and worked for me). Stir spinach to coat with sauce and watch the spinach wilt. Once spinach is thoroughly wilted but still a vibrant green color, remove pan from heat and serve.

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Produce Sides Uncategorized Video How-to

Sweet Potato French Fries

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While making sweet potato chips the other day (see that post here), I decided to use one of the other attachments from my new mandoline and make french fries as well. Once again, I was surprised and delighted by how easy and quick it was to turn one giant yam into a pile of matchstick fries.

After hestitating for a long time (“Mandolines are too expensive,” I thought. “They’re too dangerous.”) I purchased my Swissmar Borner V Slicer Plus for only about $40 and I learned that it works great and has many built-in safety features. Click on the photo to learn more.

As usual, I was in a rush, so I didn’t salt these for the recommended 30 minutes. I just salted them and threw them into olive oil that I had pre-heated to nearly smoking. It only took about 5 minutes before they looked done.

With tongs, I transferred them to a paper-towel lined plate and dabbed them to remove the excess oil. I salted them again and enjoyed them with leftover roast beef from the night before. Scroll down to watch the recipe video I used for the roast beef.
Although they tasted great, the sweet potato fries weren’t super crispy, so I did a little research. There’s a thread on CHOW that recommends soaking them in water first, then dredging them in cornstarch and then frying. I’m definitely going to try that next time because several people who tried this method concurred that it was a big success. You can read that thread here.

Even without the extra cornstarch step, these fries were super yummy. The texture reminded me a bit of the French fries at In & Out Burger, not super crispy, but still good. And since they’re sweet potatoes, they’re packed with extra nutrients, right?