Monday, March 14, 2011

Sweet Corn Salad with Cherry Tomatoes and Feta Cheese

I kind of like salad. As a matter of fact, I can really like salad. It's just when I have to order it in a restaurant, I'm often pretty fussy about it. Making it myself, however, is a completely different story. I can put whatever ingredients I like in there and how much sourness, freshness, sweetness or saltiness that I want.

Personally I like my salad somewhat salty with a bit of freshness and sourness. I love Italian mixed green salad, mostly organic because that's just where you can get the crunchiest loveliest greens. Some additional toasted nuts will be great to add some flavour and cheese is definitely a must. I prefer feta cheese to put in my salad, but shredded cheddar cheese will work as well. As we are now talking about cheese, I find it rather weird that the only place where I want some goat cheese is in a salad. Other than that, I pretty much hate goat cheese. I dislike its strong, strong smell and how it stays inhabiting my fridge for a while if the it's not finished quickly enough. Vincent likes goat cheese so much! He could eat it just like that with some toasted French bread. In the early months when he just moved here, he bought goat cheese almost every time we went out shopping for groceries. I remember how I was rather upset about it because this is one of the most expensive cheese in Bali and yet I couldn't enjoy it as he would! Anyway, put some goat cheese in your vegetable salad or sprinkle it on a tomato together with olive oil, salt and pepper and put it in the oven for a few minutes, it will transform the low profile salad into a posh, most delicious salad ever!

The reason why I am talking about salad is because I just ate one for lunch. A very nice one, if I may add. I originally wanted to make dadar jagung - Indonesian mashed corn cake, but I found out that I ran out of eggs. It had been raining the whole day today so I couldn't go out and buy some eggs either. My stomach was growling angrily and I had to think fast what to do with my sweet corns I just bought a few days ago.
So I came up with this Sweet Corn Salad with Cherry Tomatoes and Feta Cheese. I could have made my normal, full-of-nutrition lunch dish I usually had, but Vincent and I just bought a bathroom scale yesterday so that we could watch our weight and be alarmed if it got too much. He needs to lose weight in a month due to his gastritis condition and I just want my once J-Lo's body back. Okay, I am not that ambitious. Kate Winslet's body is alright too for me.

I did think that I lost some weight when Vincent was in Vietnam. But now that he's back, I eat normally again (when I was alone, I could eat whenever I wanted and there were only a few times that I actually felt hungry). I suppose that's what causes my 60.4 kg weight as proven down here, despite my diligence in having Wii fitness and yoga training!
I swear last night it was only 59 kgs!

I'm actually not overweight with my 157 cms height. But I'm in the borderline between slim and fat with more tendency to fat. And to compare this 60.4 kgs with my once-steady-highschool-and-college weight of 45 kgs, this is a sad fact! So, I've made up my mind to at least lose 5 kgs in the next month. I'll do the Wii exercise everyday and eat more healthy foods. If Vincent protests because I am serving grass on his plate - his reference to green salad - he can be disappointed as he wants. :P

Anyway, enough rambling. Here is my lovely sweet corn salad with cherry tomatoes and feta cheese recipe. It's great to eat with crunchy garlic bread and fruit juice for lunch. This makes one portion.

Ingredients:

  • 10 pieces of cherry tomatoes. Keep them whole.
  • A handful of fusilli, or other fast-cooking pasta you like
  • One celery, diced.
  • One sweet corn cut through. If using frozen sweet corn, take a handful of it.
  • A big pinch of feta cheese
  • A knob of butter
  • Salt and pepper
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • White wine vinegar
Instructions:
  1. Boil some water in a pan. Add salt and fusilli, then stir it around. Cook according to the pasta packet instruction.
  2. On another hob, heat a knob of butter in a sauce pan. As soon as it melts, sauté the celery and sweet corn together. Nearing completion, add salt and pepper to it. Stir.
  3. When the fusilli is done, drain it in a colander and pour the cooked fusilli into the sauce pan together with the celery and sweet corn.
  4. After well combined, put it on a plate. Add your cherry tomatoes and sprinkle with feta cheese. 
  5. Add 2 glugs of extra virgin olive oil and a small tiny splash of white wine vinegar. Toss. 
Easy peasy...

8 comments:

Unknown said...

yummy. if only I like salad.

Carla Chanliau said...

it just tastes better if you make it yourself because you choose the ingredients and you mix them on your own. you can put beans, carrots, potatoes, greens or whatever you like. you can also get to decide how you want to treat them: boil, steam, toast, fry...

Cooking Gallery said...

Haha, I have been struggling to lose weight as well but at the moment I am giving up. I am like you, not overweight but on the borderline, so I have to watch out, especially because I am going to visit Indo in summer, bisa kalap nanti...hahhaha;))!!

My husband loves salad and I only love salad if I can eat it together with meat ;).

Carla Chanliau said...

Yeah, isn't it crazy that back in those days, we could eat whatever we wanted at anytime we wanted and now we just simply can't? Where did all those foods go before? And why do they seem to always stay now? :D

Liz That Skinny Chick Can Bake said...

What a fabulous salad! I love the addition of corn and cherry tomatoes...mmmmm.

Thanks for stopping by my blog...I know you could make my brown bread...just don't overmix...much less stressful than yeast bread :)

Carla Chanliau said...

Thanks for dropping by here, Lizzy. I'll definitely try your brown bread and might post it here if it comes out nicely. :)

RinAku said...

Hahaha......weight seems to have been quite an issue lately. Breastfeeding makes me hungry more often than I used to. My stomach always rumbles when I get up in the morning. That's why it's kinda hard to get my previous-before-pregnant body weight: 48 kg. My present weight stays around 51 or 52. I've been thinking of cutting my carbo intake, but I've found it hard lately not to eat rice (especially since I got married to Win. I used to feel fine just by eating some bread, but Win, he is a rice person). Well anyway, I'll try out this salad recipe this weekend. It looks yummy.

Carla Chanliau said...

Bread and rice are both carbs. I don't think one is better than the other except that rice makes you constipated more than when you eat other types of carbs. So if you have a fine digestion - unlike me - eating rice should pose no threat to you. ;)

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