Tzatziki Corn Salad

A warm welcome to new subscriber Jacqueline!


With summer now in full swing, a lot of food talk naturally turns to cookout-type food. Here’s an easy, delicious side dish for your next backyard gathering or company picnic: Tzatziki Corn Salad.


Corn salads are usually pretty popular, and with good reason: they’re tasty and refreshing to eat, and easy to make, even in large quantities. While the vegetables in them can vary somewhat, the big difference between corn salads often lies in the choice of dressing. For this version, I’m using a tzatziki sauce. While Greece has made countless contributions to western civilization, all that art, mathematics and philosophy pale next to a good tzatziki, a tangy yogurt-and-cucumber based white sauce. Even if you don’t make this corn salad, the tzatziki sauce will be a useful addition to your repertoire. Opa, indeed!


This recipe makes about 6 cups of corn salad.


To make the sauce:


Combine ¾ cup fat free Greek yogurt; ½ medium cucumber (seeds removed), finely chopped; ½ teaspoon kosher salt; 2 garlic cloves, finely minced; ½ tablespoon olive oil; 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar; and either 1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano, or 1 teaspoon dried oregano. Set the sauce aside while you work with the vegetable.


The make the vegetable mix:


You’ll need either 12 ears of corn, silks and husks removed, or 4 cups of frozen corn kernels thawed and patted dry with a paper towel. Apply a small amount of olive oil the corn (just enough to lightly coat for grilling), and grille until the corn is lightly browned. (Don’t kill it; you’re just looking to give it a little color and mild grilled taste.) Set the corn aside and let cool. If you’re using fresh corn, cut the kernels off the cob after the corn has cooled.


Combine the corn, 4 cups of diced tomatoes (fresh or well-drained canned), 1 finely chopped green or orange pepper, ½ cup of minced onion, and 1 minced large stalk of celery in a large bowl. (Adding some diced, cooked bacon here is optional, but highly recommended.) Drain again to remove any extra liquid so that the tzatziki sauce does not get diluted.


Add the sauce and mix well. Add salt and pepper to taste. For best flavor, refrigerate overnight to chill the salad and give the flavors a chance to combine. Garnish with parsley before serving, and you’ve got a winner!


As always, if you prefer a cookbook style, notebook-ready version of this recipe, send me a note or a comment along with your e-mail address, and it shall be yours.

That’s it for now. I’m looking forward to sharing another easy, delicious, reduced-fat dish with you next week. Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)

Good Eatin'

Got a recipe for you today for a wonderful (and, to me, very special) potato salad that's as easy to make as it is delicious to eat. A bit of background first will give it a proper context.

I grew up eating food, not preparing it. As a cook, I'm very much a child of the Food Network era; Anne, Tyler, Rachel, Bobby and Mario, among others, remain my long-distance teachers. Still, my favorite cook of all was showing her fans the wonderful way good food could make someone feel before there was any such thing as food television, or even color television. Her following was small - 10 at its peak - but very devoted. Her name was Bessie, she was known as Mrs. M, and she was my grandmother. 

Grandma was not a fancy cook. She was meat-and-potatoes, but how good she made those meat-and-potatoes taste. How my grandfather, a limber, wiry man, stayed as thin as he did his whole life, remains a mystery to this day.

Most of her recipes are lost, probably forever, but three are known to still exist, including the one I consider the Holy Grail of the bunch: Grandma's Potato Salad. This week being the anniversary of her passing in 1984, I can think of no more fitting tribute than giving this most special dish of hers to friends and fellow food lovers all over the world so they can enjoy it too.

Why is this potato salad so good? Having eaten it all my life I still can't put the answer into words. You'll see there are no unusual ingredients or techniques involved. But so good it is when it comes together, a particularly cherished side dish to so many special family dinners, when my uncle would call things like this "good eatin'." When we were really fortunate, we'd take a batch home, and us kids would get to have a bowl for lunch the next day. Not with lunch...for lunch.

The ingredients are simple, so you may be tempted to try to dress it up with other things, such as chopped eggs. I hope you will avoid doing so. If you do and one night have a dream in which you're being chased by a diminutive gray-haired but surprisingly energetic old woman, wielding a rolling pin and saying, "Get over here, ya bestid!" don't say you weren't warned. My advice is to save the eggs for someone else’s potato salad recipe.

So now here it is, for your "good eatin' " pleasure
To make about 1-1/2 quarts of this wonderful stuff, put 2 pounds of potatoes (about 6 medium) in a pot with the skins still on and cover with about an inch of water. Heat the water till it's boiling and cook the potatoes till they're done but still firm. (Regardless of whether your potatoes are medium, or small, or large, try to get all of them the same size so that it's easier to cook them all evenly.) For medium potatoes, I've found this takes about 12 minutes from when the boiling begins, but potatoes, like the people who enjoy them, are all different, so keep an eye on them. When the potatoes are done, drain them well, and let them rest in the pot for a few minutes until the soft crackling sound stops. After that, set them aside to cool.


While the potatoes are cooling, combine in a large bowl 2/3 cup sliced celery; 1/8 cup grated or finely chopped onion; 1-1/2 carrots, grated on the large holes; 1 tablespoon of spicy mustard (Gulden's or similar); 1/3 cup mayonnaise; 1/3 tsp salt; 1/3 tsp pepper, and ¼ cup salad oil.

Once the potatoes have cooled, peel them and cut them into chunks. Add them to the large bowl and mix well until everything is combined and coated. Refrigerate until you're ready to serve it, then sprinkle a bit of paprika and chopped parsley on top.

For a cookbook style, notebook-ready copy of this or any other recipe from this site, just drop me a line and I’ll get it right off to you.

Thanks for visiting! Till next week, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)