Bacon, Avocado, and Corn Salad

Tomorrow is the last day of school, temperatures are pushing 100, and it's time to sit by the pool for hours a day!  It's also time for me to make every single side salad recipe I can find.  I began tonight with this gem.

Ingredients:
5 strips of thick cut bacon
4 ears of corn, husked
1/2 c. feta or cotija cheese (I didn't measure)
2 T. cilantro, chopped (again, didn't measure)
juice of 1 lime
1 large avocado
salt and pepper


Directions:

1. Cook the bacon in a skillet until crisp.  Drain the grease, leaving about a tablespoon or so in your skillet.
2. Slice the kernels off the husks of the corn and throw them into the skillet.  Cook for a few minutes until golden brown, bacony, and delicious.
3. Turn off the heat and throw the cheese, bacon, cilantro, and lime juice in with the corn.  Mix.
4. At this point the recipe said to let it cool to room temperature, but I didn't have time for that.  Do what you want.
5. Pit and chop the avocado into small-ish chunks.  Throw them in the mixture and stir.
6. Salt and pepper to taste.
7. Enjoy!

This was pretty darned good, I must admit.  It's obviously not the most healthy of side dishes, but man, those flavor combinations were great.  It was all my favorite things in a bowl.

We had this with tequila lime chicken.  I made a marinade of tequila, lime juice, shallot, garlic, jalapeno, olive oil, and cilantro.  Let the chickens get to know each other in the marinade while we went to happy hour.  Then when they were almost all the way cooked, I threw some homemade pico de gallo on top of the chickens.  Threw some shredded colby jack on top of the pico and cooked until the cheese was melted.  Also delicious.

Ahhhhhh summer vacation!!!

Molly

Sprouts

Let's get back to the subject of sprouts:

If you've tried them, you know they are a great addition to the fresh vegetable arsenal.  They are tasty and nutritious and easy to grow on the kitchen counter year round.  The finer ones, like alfalfa or radish make a great garnish.  The larger, like lentils or mung beans, can be a significant part of a salad or stir fry.  Mom likes any kind of sprouts to top any kind of sandwich.

I started out using a special made sprout grower from The Sprout People but soon found that a one quart canning jar turned on its side worked just as well, accommodating 1/4 cup of lentils or mung beans to make a jar full of sprouts in 3-4 days.  The only complaint was that our bean sprouts were short and stubby, never getting very long before they started to try to grow leaves.

Then I read that mung beans need to be sprouted under light pressure to grow long sprouts.  So, I converted my sauerkraut press (round of hickory log in a plastic bucket) to a sprout press (slightly smaller diameter round of hickory log so it would reach to bottom of the tapered bucket in a plastic bucket).  A half cup of mung beans did not quite cover the bottom of the bucket.  I soaked them for ~6 hours, drained them, and left them under the hickory round.  Rinsed twice a day.  I used a colander to drain the water. In 4 days, I had a 1 gal plastic bag about 3/4 full of long, full sprouts.  I made a really nice breakfast salad of ~half-and-half bean sprouts and baby spinach leaves from the garden with tarragon vinaigrette dressing, and last night we had a big stir fry with a double hand full of bean sprouts.  This is really the ticket for growing mung bean sprouts.

Yesterday, I tried starting a batch of red lentil sprouts in the press.  I don't know if using the press will make any difference with the lentils as it did for the mung beans but I'll keep you posted.

In the mean time, we are eating spinach, lettuce, asparagus, and sprouts, watching the strawberries fill out, and planting garden like mad.

Caramelized onions

Have I posted this before?  If so, I apologize for the repeat.  But, we just had friends over for dinner and enjoyed one of my current favorite flavor combinations, and I felt inspired to post.

Aleks grilled beef steaks, I caramelized onions, and then we pulled some gorgonzola cheese out of the cheese drawer to add to the mix.  Amazing!  4 of us adults ate 6 onions worth of caramelized onions!  Slathering onions and bleu cheese or gorgonzola on top of burgers is another favorite of mine.

The trick is to get well-cooked onions, without adding too much oil and without over-browning them.  I've found that the secret is salt. The salt pulls the liquid out of the onions as they cook, and the liquid keep the onions from burning, without the need for oil.

Thinly slice more onions than you think you could possibly need.  1) These are so good that even people who don't like onions heap them on their plate, so you always eat more than you think you will, and 2) The volume will decrease substantially as you cook them.  Put a bit of olive oil or butter, just enough to tide you over until the salt does it's trick, in the bottom of your pan, add the onions, and turn on the heat to medium/medium-high.  Sprinkle in some salt, not enough to make it taste salty, but enough to act on the onions, maybe 1/2 t. per 3 onions, but I really just sort of sprinkle it on, so that's just a guess.  Turn the onions as they heat to mix in the salt and keep everything from browning.  When the onions start to cook and release their liquid, turn the heat down to medium-low/low. Cover with a lid.  Turn the onions every once in a while, and continue cooking until they are translucent and soft, and a big delicious mess, about 15-30 min.  If the onions are too soupy and not brown enough, remove the lid and turn up the heat a bit.  As the liquid evaporates off, scrape the bottom of the pan and turn the onions every few minutes so that they brown without burning for another 5 min or so.  Enjoy at will!

I think onions cooked this way count as one of those dishes that is cheap, oh so good, and good for you, if you keep the oil to a minimum and take advantage of the salt.

-Maggie