In the mood for more corn after 3-14: Creamy Corn Chowder? It’s still not quite corn season yet, but if you’ve got some frozen corn hanging out in the freezer, you can feel like it’s summer with 2-26: Corn & Wild Rice Salad.
This would be a great recipe to make for a summer BBQ or picnic–it’s healthy, pretty, and as they say above, easy to make. It feels incredibly out of season now (February), but therein lies the magic of the Internet–you might find this in June or July and it’ll be perfect then.
The recipe suggests using frozen corn (which I did, due to the fact that it’s February), but I think fresh corn would be even better–especially if you roasted or grilled it first. Consider it, when corn season rolls around and it’s dirt-cheap. Yes, it’s not as easy as frozen corn, but flavor-wise I think it’d be worth it.
Ingredients. My veggies and herbs look a bit sad–sometimes it takes longer than anticipated between hitting the grocery store and actually making the recipe. I went with vegetable oil instead of olive oil for this–olive oil sometimes gets a rancid or sour taste when mixed with acidic ingredients (such as lemon or lime juice).
Wild rice in the rice cooker–I hate cooking rice on the stove, especially if I don’t really have to for the recipe.
Dicing the red pepper–easy to do if you follow my pepper strip method from 9-12: Shepherd’s Pie and just cut them one more time. Same method works (mostly) for anything else you need to dice–make strips, rotate 90 degrees, cut one more time.
Rough chop on the cilantro–I love the smell of freshly chopped cilantro.
Mixing the veggies, herbs, & beans. It’s a lot of color for February.
Ugly picture of the dressing. I kind of messed up here–the jalapeño peppers were supposed to be in the dressing, not in the salad. Considering it’s all going to marinate and be eaten together, I think it’ll be okay–the dressing itself will be less spicy, but you’ll still get the heat from it being distributed throughout the dish.
Vibrant color with very-hard-to-photograph (now cooked & drained) wild rice.
After mixing & marinating (for about 1 hour). Looks like summer in a bowl. Too bad it’s still February.
Grade: A (as per my in-house reviewer).
