Imagine That!

Hey! Did you all have a good time celebrating your independence yesterday? Did you eat, drink, and set stuff on fire? MEEEE TOOOOO!

I went to a barbecue in Queens, and my hosts grilled at least three kinds of meat. Possibly four. Maybe more than that if you consider each different type of sausage on it’s own. Plus grilled veggies in between. It was sort of an all day thing, I think we were there for about 8 hours. And it was all deeelicious.

What I brought to the party was my avocado black bean corn salad thing, which doesn’t have an official name and isn’t even really a salad? It’s sort of between a salad and a pico de gallo, I guess. Anyway, it was REQUESTED, which is hard for a thing with no name, and which also means that people love it.

Do you want to try it? Okay! I don’t follow a recipe, I seriously just see if it “looks like enough tomato” etc., but yesterday I wrote everything down so I could tell you. Viola! Recipe. Sort of.



Here’s what you need:

5 plum tomatoes, gutted and diced

4 ears of corn, cut off the cob

2 avocados, diced

2 cans of black beans, rinsed and drained

1 small red onion, finely chopped

Juice of two small limes

Handful of cilantro, chopped

Two big pinches of kosher salt



Here’s what to do:

Mix everything in a big bowl, and then transfer it to your serving/transporting bowl. Gently press the mixture into the container, and then lay a piece of plastic wrap on the surface, smoothing everything down, until you’re ready to serve it. Keeping the air off it (plus the lime juice) will help keep the avocado from turning brown. You should make this the day of the event, not in advance, though leftovers are not bad.

Serve with or without tortilla chips (Who am I kidding? WITH!) as an appetizer or a side dish. It’s also great on tacos!



Tips:

Scoop out all the seeds and guts from the tomatoes and throw them away, so they don’t make it too watery. This is a good tip for guacamole too. I use plum tomatoes because they have more flesh/less guts than other tomatoes.

Also: Don’t refrigerate your tomatoes, they’ll get gross.

Make this BEFORE you put on your mascara, because sometimes that small red onion can make you cry buckets.

Don’t substitute kosher salt with regular salt. It’s not the same! Regular salt makes things salty. Kosher salt makes things awesome. (It enhances the flavor of the food.)

This is a great way to stretch a couple of avocadoes! When they cost $2.49 each, who can afford to make a giant batch of guacamole?

The only way you can really screw this up is by adding too much salt or too much onion. If you’re unsure, just add the onion and/or salt a little at a time and taste in between.

Know what this would be really good with? Frozen Watermelon Margaritas!




Suggestions?

If anyone has a good name for this dish, leave your ideas in the comments section! (On the blog, not on Facebook! Even though I love all my FB fans! Mwah!) I really wish I would have taken a picture of it to show you how fresh and delicious it looks. It would probably have helped with the whole naming thing too. For now, uh,  I hope you enjoy imagining what this looks and tastes like? And also, what it's called? Really, it's sooo good!