Fresh Corn and Black Bean Salad and More Summer Recipes

Food|This Corn and Black Bean Salad Is Exactly What I Want to Be Eating

Exactly what I ought to be eating

Good morning. I dove into the channel off the wide sand beach and let the tide carry me along the shore. I thought about dinner as I generally think about dinner when I’m swimming, when I’m walking around, when the sun’s up or heading down.

There’s good corn around. Also avocados. I’ve got a few cans of black beans in the pantry. Also a big bag of Fritos. Which is most of the makings of Hetty Lui McKinnon’s recipe for a corn and black bean salad (above), though she makes the dish with tortilla chips. This seemed, in salt water, paddling under ospreys and terns, exactly what I ought to be eating in a few hours, probably alongside a platter of grilled chicken.

Not yet 11 a.m., and my Sunday supper sorted! I made for the beach, my towel, a novel by Rachel Cusk. Weekends are fantastic this time of year.

Tuesday

More tomatoes! Sarah DiGregorio got me to break out the slow cooker to make her new recipe for creamy tomato-basil lentil soup. I’ll set that up first thing in the morning and cook most of it before work, and then reheat in the evening before adding some extra tomatoes, cream and lemon juice for a zing of freshness against the velvety legumes.

Wednesday

There’s not much better on a weeknight than Jocelyn Ramirez’s recipe for crispy mushroom tacos. Jocelyn makes them with big, meaty oyster mushrooms, and that’s fantastic. But they’re also great with chanterelles, which I’ve been running into at the farmers’ market lately, or chopped trumpets, lovely foils for her pico de gallo.

Thursday

Life’s gotten better ever since I started stocking my freezer with frozen potstickers, and especially since I started making Hetty Lui McKinnon’s recipe for a dumpling and smashed cucumber salad with peanut sauce. I like to pan-fry the dumplings to give them a little crust. But steaming is no crime!

Friday

And then you can head into the weekend with Kiano Moju’s new recipe for coconut-cilantro chicken and rice — that rice, almost risotto-like in texture, below roasted chicken. I go heavy on the lime juice added at the end, but it’s really cook’s choice. Don’t stint on the cilantro, though.

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Now, it’s a far cry from anything to do with oyster crackers or that bright-green, store-bought mint jelly that goes so well with lamb, but a reader alerted me to an amazing article The Times published back in the summer of 1896.

It’s about a Newport society man who “made a wager several weeks ago with a person whose name is not given that he could, while swimming in the water, successfully hold out against all efforts of a single person to bring him in with an ordinary fishing rod and line, the latter to be securely fastened to his belt.” He won!