Zucchini Week - Raw Corn and Zucchini Salad

from Everyday Food at www.marthastewart.com

Day Three of Zucchini Week and we've moved on to salads.  To be honest, I haven't ever made a cold salad with zucchini.  Never thought of eating it raw, but I wanted to cover all the zucchini bases this week so I went searching for a good salad recipe.

I didn't have to look any farther than the magazine rack in the bathroom (is this too much information?) and my June 2010 issue of Everyday Food from Martha Stewart.  I love this magazine!  It's only about healthy food and cooking (no decorating, pets, cleaning...just food), has recipes that contain everyday ingredients (no rare mushrooms that only grow under bamboo in Chinese forests) and the subscription price is great.

I made Raw Corn and Zucchini Salad for dinner tonight and got 2 thumbs up from the Big Guy and 2 of the Young'uns.  I loved it too!  Very fresh, almost sweet.  It is definitely going on the summer menu rotation.  As a bonus, it took me less than 10 minutes to put it together.  We had it with BBQ chicken in the crock pot - great combo.

I actually modified the original recipe (surprise) below quite a bit because we didn't have 2 of the ingredients.  The recipe from the magazine that got my creative juices going is listed below, I'll be trying it soon!  What I actually did with the recipe is farther down.

Raw Corn and Zucchini Salad

from Everyday Food, June 2010

serves 4

3 ears of corn, husked
2 medium zucchini, thinly sliced
2 T fresh lime juice
2T olive oil
2T cilantro, chopped
salt and pepper

Cut off tips of corn.  Stand an ear in wide, shallow bowl.  With a sharp knife, slice downward to cut off kernels.  You should end up with about 2 cups of corn.  Dump corn into a medium bowl.

Add sliced zucchini, lime juice, olive oil and cilantro.  Mix.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Eat away! 

Here's what I did with my version:
-used corn from my freezer.  It was fresh off the cob last September and worked great!!
-used the juice of 1/2 a lemon instead of the lime
-skipped the cilantro
-julienned the zucchini, instead of slicing it.  My goal was to make it look less like zucchini for my non-zucchini lovers.  The disguise didn't work too well, but I really liked how it looked.  Julienne basically means to cut into VERY thin strips like matchsticks.  It's a big pain to julienne veggies with a regular knife.  I used my new favorite kitchen tool to cut mine.  It's like a vegetable peeler, but it has little "ridges" (not sure what to call them) on the blade that cuts the veggie into matchsticks.  It is so much fun!  Makes stir-fry easy, too.  You can check it out here. 

I used some of my Swagbucks (so they were free!) to get the set and love all three of them.  The serrated blade works great on mango and kiwi and such.

Happy Zucchini Eating!