Fresh corn-rice salad

Summer’s almost here and along with the heat, we have wonderful, sweet, crisp corn on the cob.  The temperature is already above 90 degrees here in Fredericksburg Virginia.  We broke the record high on Thursday and I believe Friday will bring more of the same.

Is your weather going to be lovely this long Memorial Day weekend?  Perhaps you’re having a cookout and just maybe you’re looking for a simple, not-so-traditional salad.  If so, give this fresh corn and rice dish a stir.

You’ll need four fresh ears of corn.  Yum, yum, yum.  I love corn on the cob.  We’ll see more of this beautiful vegetable this summer 🙂

These ingredients are very flexible.  Cook long grain rice and cool.  Slice two cups of grape or cherry tomatoes, clean 1 cup of arugula or spinach or a combination of both, slice a small red onion, thinly slice a jalapeno chili pepper, and lastly you’ll need rice vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Husk the corn and remove the silk.  Cook the corn in lightly salted boiling water for 3 minutes.  Drain and cool.  Cut the corn off the cob carefully leaving some planks whole … because they look so pretty.

Mix the broken kernels, rice and all other vegetables in a large bowl.  Lay the whole corn planks on top and drizzle with rice vinegar and olive oil.  Sprinkle with freshly ground pepper and sea salt to taste.

We still had some arugula growing in the garden but with this heat, I don’t think it will be there for long.

Maybe you could use Quinoa instead of rice, add bell pepper or any other ingredients hanging out in the vegetable bin.  This corn was so sweet and crisp.  We would probably use a lot less onion next time and should have soaked it in cold water to ease some of the bite.  I love onion but ended up picking out most of it from my serving.  The rice soaked up the oil and vinegar and distributed the flavors throughout the salad.