the review: roasted corn, jicama, and mango salad

I like a recipe with a picture. I like to have an idea of the end goal. I am totally a planner at heart. But I chose to make roasted corn, jicama, and mango salad despite the lack of accompanying photo because I happened to have every single ingredient on hand. How often does that happen? Never.

With no visual guideposts, I had to wing it. I roasted the corn in the oven and cut the vegetables (sort of) julienne as instructed. I could not possibly see using an entire onion to four ears of corn, one jicama, and one mango, nor could I see using an entire cup of oil for the dressing. I used about a quarter of a red onion and only ½ cup of olive oil for the dressing. Much better decision. I think this salad could benefit from a bit of minced jalapeño as well.

The salad was a perfect side for barbeque chicken (I used the leftover barbeque sauce that I had from father’s day, which I had frozen, to season the chicken and it was excellent). It was a great summer salad. However, there were two complaints from the peanut gallery. First, too much onion. Still. Second, wrong cutting shape of the vegetables and fruit.

The first complaint – too much onion – I’m going to chalk up to the complainer rather than the cook. However, as my husband (the second complainer) pointed out, if the onion had been diced and the jicama and mango had been chopped in chunks, the bites of salad might have been better proportioned. Rob’s theory was that smaller pieces of onion would have blended in and made the onion itself less strong. My theory was that bigger pieces of onion are easier for complaining kids to pick out. You be the judge.

I will probably make this salad again because it is light and fresh and flavorful and a great way to use corn. I will probably make it as my husband suggested, with chunks rather than julienned pieces. If you make it before I do, would you give the chunck version a try and let me know if it works? That would be awesome. Thanks.   

Oh, and PS? You really should make the chicken. Really.