How to Make Corn Salad with Creamy Italian Dressing

How to Make Corn Salad with Creamy Italian Dressing Hello, this is Chef John from Foodwishes.com with a delicious, easy summer salad. This is toasted corn with red pepper, basil and creamy Italian vinaigrette which is really easy to make which is what we’re going to do first. So I have some whole mayonnaise, full fat mayonnaise. Don’t skimp on that. I’m going to crush one garlic clove very fine, salt and pepper to taste. All the amounts I used will be on the website as always. A little bit of dried Italian herbs, a pinch of cayenne, red wine vinegar and olive oil, some sugar and a little splash of water. One thing you’re going to notice with this dressing, it is not your classic with the call creamy Italian in the restaurant or in the store which is basically that flavored mayonnaise. It’s really thick, it’s really just coats everything, cloaks everything, the only thing you can taste. This is a really, really light, full-flavored, a very light dressing. So you’re going to see this is thick enough to definitely coat any greens or leaves or vegetable you can use them with, but it’s also very light and not just like a thick clappy mayonnaise. So you’re going to let that set if you can overnight. And it really will develop the flavors. So I made this the day before, I put in one of those little squeeze bottles. I put in the fridge onto the salad, and by the way, if in case you’re wondering, do I really use organic? When I can. This is Trader Joe’s organic sweet corn, one palm bag, frozen. I’m going to thawed that completely. Make sure you drain it well. I want to put that in a sauté pan with some olive oil and on medium heat, I’m going toast it. So what I want is a very light golden brown. You see that, it’s just almost getting there. This took me about 15 minutes, and when it kind of looks like that, you can just see little kind of toasty brown edges on the corn, that was it. I turned it off, set it aside In meantime, I’m going to prep my Piquillo red roasted peppers. You can use any roasted red peppers. You can roast your own. I really like this Piquillo peppers or Spanish pepper, any jarred roasted red pepper will do. Dice it into the same size as the corn that will make it nice looking salad so that was easy. I dumped my now just barely warm corn on top of the peppers. Salt and pepper to taste, You’re going to need a good amount of salt in this just like corn on the cab, it’s okay without salt but it’s fantastic with salt. I’m going to toast that together and then I’m going to add the dressing just enough to coat it. Alright, pounded corn, I’d probably put in maybe a third of a cup of dressing because you’re going to add more later when you go to serve this. And I’m going to set that aside and I’m going to shift and add some basils, there’s your extreme basil close up, roll up to four to five leaves into like a cigar and just slice across it. And you get these beautiful ribbons, very nice way to cut basil. For your final prep, I put a little extra shot of cayenne just because you know that’s what I do. I threw in my basil. I toss it together and you want to do this right before you serve it. Okay, so you can make this hour ahead if you want. When you want to put in the basil there at the end and by the way, I like this room temperature. So I didn’t even refrigerate the corn and the pepper. I just you know served it as is. If you refrigerate it, I suggest you let it warm up a little bit before you toss in the basil and serve it. I think it’s just nicer and you get more that sweet corn flavor but it’s not like ice, ice cold. So there you go. A kind of two for one made easy, easy creamy Italian dressing and an equally easy great summer salad. By the way, I’ll throw that next to some wild boar, fantastic. This goes so good with any of those summer grilled meats. Anyway, go to the site, all the ingredients are there and as always, enjoy.