Black Bean, Red Onion, Corn and Bell Pepper Salad

Up until I sat down to write this, the menu felt like it was incomplete and needed something else to bring just a little bit more seasonal personality to it. I wanted to come up with another vegetable dish, this time a cold one. This dish, typically served cold, is perfect as a Thanksgiving side or for any cookout or barbeque and suits the skill level of any home chef, no matter how inexperienced. There are three ways to make this dish: one using a gas stove, one in a pan, and one using a broiler (UK/Ireland readers: you call this a “grill”—the top, really hot element in your oven). All of them yield the same results, so use whichever you feel most comfortable with (or whichever your equipment situation allows for).

This dish has several components that require a few different knife skills, but none are too complicated. Slicing, dicing, filleting (a pepper, not a fish. Don’t worry about the knife work for a fish’ that’s much more complicated), and roughly chopping will all be involved.

The first method involves a gas stove. This one gets the best results, but it’s the one that requires the most attention since you will be dealing directly with an open gas flame. Only use this method if you’re comfortable (and if you actually have a gas stove—electric, induction, or other stoves don’t work for this). Grab at least one, maybe two ears of high-quality corn. Husk each ear, removing all the green husk and all the yellow or white “hairy” strands. (If any of this is left on the corn, it’ll burn and that burned flavor will go into the corn kernels.) Turn on one of your burners to medium high. Using metal tongs (nothing made of plastic or with plastic-coated tips), place one ear of corn at a time directly on the burner, turning it a quarter-turn every 15 seconds or so, for about 2 minutes, or until the corn is fire-roasted to your liking. Please be careful. In between each ear, turn the burner off, get the next ear, and turn the burner back on again to repeat the process. After the last ear has been roasted, turn off the burner. Set all the corn on a plate. We’ll come back to it later. If you are using a broiler, set it to low and turn every 30 seconds.

Now, repeat this same process of roasting individual vegetables on an open gas flame with half as many bell peppers as you have ears of corn. I recommend red bell peppers or a mix of red and another color. (Red and yellow or red and orange work particularly well if you want to mix.) This time, however, after you have roasted the peppers, their skins will go black. Wrap them in aluminum foil and let them stay there for about 15 minutes undisturbed. This does a number of things: it steams the peppers inside out, softening them. It loosens the skin from the peppers. And it allows the peppers time to cool enough to be handleable.

In the meantime, drain the liquid from one 15-once can of black beans, reserving only the beans. Finely dice one red onion. (Red onions are better in salads like this; white or yellow onions would be too pungent raw).

After the peppers are cool enough to handle, you should, just by rubbing the skin with your hands, be able to remove the skin charred skin. This removes the blackened outer layer but, thankfully, does not remove the smoky flavor this process created. Now, cut the pepper like you do when you slice an apple: hold it by its stem and slice down around the core taking off all the flesh and leaving only the core behind to minimize waste and maximize flavor. (If you’re doing this only in a pan, now is the time to follow this technique with the raw pepper). Dice the pepper and place it in a bowl (or in a pan if still raw).

You need a Bundt pan to deal with the corn. Bundt pans are those cake pans that make “mega-donut” shapes; you sometimes use them for flan, sometimes for regular cakes, and sometimes for other applications. If the corn is already roasted, stand it up in the central column of the Bundt pan and run your knife along the side of the cob. Shave off the kernels and let them fall into the Bundt pan. If the corn is not already roasted, do this process, and then transfer the corn into a sauté pan into which unroasted diced peppers have already been placed.

If you want to do this without a broiler or without a gas stove, simply chop all your ingredients as indicated, coat a sauté pan in a thin film of oil, and cook the diced peppers and corn kernels until fragrant.
In any case, once the peppers, onions, corn, and beans are all ready, combine them in a single bowl. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Serve chilled.