Clean Out The Fridge Corn Salad



Steven Depolo



Nothing says summer more than Fourth of July Weekend at the beach.  A whole group of us went to my family's beach house and spent three glorious days eating, drinking, sunning, playing.  It was wonderful and wonderfully exhausting.  On the last night, we had a fridge full of leftovers and very little energy to cook.  So I declared it "Clean Out The Fridge Night" and barred the use of the stove.  But what to do with all the random ingredients?  Yes, we could all have the leftover potato salad, cole slaw and hot dogs but wouldn't it be nice to have one new thing? 

So keeping the "no stove" rule in mind, I tossed together all the remnant goodies from the weekend's cooking and come up with a delicious and fresh tasting salad that livened up the leftovers.  The main ingredient, grilled corn, is one of my favorite summertime treats.  The grilling (especially over charcoal) imparts a delicious smokey, buttery flavor that complements the fresh veggies that you'll add to the salad.  If you didn't grill corn, regular corn on the cob or even canned corn could be used.  I've listed the ingredients I used but dig around in the fridge and I'm sure you could come up with a hundred variations.

Clean Out the Fridge Corn Salad
Serves 6 as a side
Ingredients
5-6 ears of corn on the cob
2 small tomatoes
1/2 green pepper
1 green onion
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
2 Tbsp Vidalia Onion salad dressing (or whatever you have on hand)
salt/pepper

Directions
1. Shave the corn to remove the kernels and place in a medium bowl.  Work through with your fingers to break up the chunks. 
2.  Finely chop the tomato, green pepper and onion.  Add the vegetables along with the cilantro to the bowl and mix with corn. 
3.  Stir in the dressing (it doesn't need a whole lot, let the fresh flavors shine) and add a little salt and pepper to taste.
4.  Chill for 20 minutes or so to let the flavors blend. 

Serve
Serve as a side dish at a cook-out, with your favorite leftovers, or even as a salsa.