This is week 14 of plantbased cooking challenge where we have been given six items. I chose asparagus and corn, sprouts plus grapefruit.
I chose to make salad since we have not been eating heavily lately. It's become like the tropics here in Montreal. They have even given us heat warnings which to me is funny. There are places in the world that know nothing but sweltering heat. If they got a heat warning it would be everyday.
Grapefruit vinaigrette
Juice of one grapefruit
1 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
2 or 3 cloves garlic
1 cup white balsamic
1/4 cup agave nectar (or sugar to your liking)
Salt to taste
Black pepper to taste (I like a lot of cracked black pepper in this)
I don't know why but I have always thought that asparagus has paired well with corn. To me asparagus is a spring vegetable and corn is fall. These days, everything is imported with very little coming from in the country so we can usually get things out of our season.
Most people know that asparagus has woody ends that need to be cut off. The stems take longer to cook than the tips so if you are steaming you leave the tips up out of submergence.
For this salad I was going to put them in a frying pan. In order to evenly cook, I shaved the stems with a peeler and made strips.
They were cooked for a minute or two in a hot pan. I don't like over cooked greens so I just made sure they were heated through then taken off the pan to cool for salad.
We have quite a bit of sweet corn in stores these days. I love fire roasted corn like you get in hot countries. Fortunately I have a butane camping stove that I can use for these things. I did set off the smoke alarm since it was done indoors. No harm done.
It wasn't really cooked as much as usual. I once discovered that raw sweet corn is quite edible. I just charred this and that was the extent of the cooking. If the corn is not sweet or too tough, it won't be great if it's not cooked enough.
After shaving the corn I set it aside with lime juice tossed in it and cooled it.
After the asparagus and corn were cooled I assembled the salad.
I was happy to finally find sprouts in the nearby store. Radish sprouts and sunflower sprouts.
The sprouts and a few chunks of grapefruit made a refreshing and also very satisfying salad. It was a meal for us.
