Roasted Corn & Jalepeno Salsa

Somewhere lost in the shuffle of this busy week, I got all the ingredients for this side dish/dip but never got around to making it.  I always see tubs of it in the grocery store, good, fresh ingredients, looks easy enough, so with some extra energy this afternoon (where'd that come from?) I decided to make this to bring to work with me tonight (lucky partners!)

First things first, I turned on the tunes:

{nothing happens easily or well in my house if there's a lack of music.  It's just a rule you see & John Mayer had things to tell me today!!!}

Then gathered my ingredients:

1 bag of frozen corn, thawed (or about 4 ears worth cut from the cob)

2 small jalapeños (or 0-1 if you're not a fan of the heat)

2 cups of cherry tomatoes

1 medium red onion

2 medium sized cucumbers

2 medium avocados

1 can of black beans, rinsed

3 limes

1 bunch of cilantro

Salt, to taste

Remember, I'm an eyeballer when it comes to cooking, I just cook as I go, so you may add and subtract from these quantities as you see fit, but this seemed to work out just fine for me.

It was hot today, not East Coast record-breaking hot, but hot enough that I was not going to be roasting corn on the BBQ or turning on the oven.

I grabbed a bag of thawed out fresh corn, coated a skillet with some olive oil spray and turned it on high.

This stuff cooks fast (see popcorn), watch it, don't get caught up in taking too many pictures for your blog or yelling for the 4-legged roomba to come and eat up what might spill if you're too overzealously tossing corn kernels instead of using a spatula. 

It took about 6 minutes on high with constant stirring to get a good char on the little kernels. 

 I took them off the heat and threw them in my new, beautiful bowl.



{Emma, AKA Food Roomba, she can hear food drop from the backyard, sniff it out on the floor,  and have it cleaned it up faster than you can say SharkVac!!}



I quickly chopped up the jalapeños, reminding myself to not touch my face or my eyes accidentally, took out the membranes and the seeds (where the spicy lives) and chopped them up to roast them in the same pan. 

Let's pause here for a second. 

It only took about 20 seconds of hot peppers on high putting out hot pepper fumes into my nostrils, before I started to cough and sneeze.  It was like I was watching Steel Magnolias!!  Oh the tears!!!

It was like I maced myself and got a steam facial all at once!

I hadn't even gotten to chopping the onion yet!!! 

I refused to be defeated by pepper fumes.

I carried on, chopping, wiping my eyes with a clean towel,

putting everything in the bowl in no particular order:

Rinsed the black beans

chopped tomatoes, onion, cucumbers, avocados

I threw in about 1.5 T of salt (give it a taste)

then squeezed the limes right over the top of the avocados before to giving it all a good toss together so they could all make friends with each other before having a good, cold siesta in the fridge for a couple of hours

Before I put it in the fridge {as is the requirement of any good cook} I grabbed a couple of chips and dug in…

this stuff is G-O-O-D!!

but lemme tell you that jalapeños after doing a little fire dance in the skillet, they're not playing around

This salsa packs a punch!! 

but it's good, fresh, easy to make, the ingredients are not expensive, and they are readily available. 

I give this two thumbs up for summer! 

I'm already imagining the variations on this with mango, strawberries, jicima, black eyed peas, kidney beans, the list goes on and then how to eat it - on salads with grilled shrimp or chicken, in tacos, on taco salad, layered in a bean dip…oh the possibilities!!!

Here's to Summertime and sidedishes!!

~ Lo