Cooling Zucchini + Corn Salad

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately on I work, get time with my son and my partner, have time to train AND “cook so much.”

I do cook a lot. Every day. But I don’t spend a lot of time cooking because I don’t have that time. The meals I make – daily, sometimes multiple times, all come together because I’m constantly forward thinking, making a little extra, and doing what’s low lift and easy. And this Cooling Zucchini + Corn Salad is a wonderful example of how it all works, how beautiful, delicious and nourishing meals come together with very little brainspace, bandwidth happen on the regular.

Three days of cooking beautifully with no time

This salad came to be on a weeknight when we happened to have some leftover couscous and chicken leftover that needed a beautiful way to be enjoyed. We loved it so much that we made it all from scratch again the following week, this time using buratta, and then have been “deliberately making leftovers” of the ingredients so we can put it together in a snap. Leo is calling this “couscous down pasta.” I’m just calling it perfection.

Here’s what my cooking + prep looked like the days prior to making the salad the first time:

• Sunday night: Couscous w/Zucchini + Strip Steak + Simple Salad – I had extra time to make something super-summery, so I made a big batch of couscous, grilled zucchini in the pizza oven to toss with it, prepped a shallot dressing, grilled steak, and made a simple salad with cucumbers. We poured the shallot dressing over everything. We devoured the steak and salad, and I stored the extra shallot dressing and couscous for another purpose

• Monday night: Lazy Rice Bowls for dinner – no time. So, I made a pot of rice in the rice cooker, and baked 2lbs of chicken in the pizza oven (its too hot to cook in my kitchen, this could have been done in an oven as well.) We tossed in steamed carrots, greens, pickled onions that are always on hand, some microgreens – done. I stored the chicken for another purpose.

• Tuesday night: This Cooling Zucchini + Corn Salad – even less time. I busted out the leftover couscous, shallot dressing and chicken, chopped the zucchini and corn and threw it in the oven. A few minutes later, it was done, I added the shallot dressing and couscous, and we were eating in less than 20 minutes.

This cascade of yummyness was not accidental – it was premeditated as part of my weekend kitchen practice. (If you’re a Back to Forward member, you can read here how to set up your own!) It’s the weekly practice that saves my life and my home cooking. And by making a little extra to use immediately, I avoided us eating languishing leftovers, and kept our meals fresh, beautiful, delicious and nutritionally valuable.

Super summer ingredients

As a household of pitta-types, we’re doing everything we can to keep the fire at bay this time of year, and that includes the ingredients I am – and am not – cooking with. (You can read more about what that means here.)

We reduce our consumption of red meat, eggs and nuts, use peppers and tomatoes carefully, and dive head first into zucchini, corn, cooling cooked greens, juicy fruits, ghee, fresh dairy in moderation, and light, fresh meals that are cooked to keep digestive fire and inflammation at bay, and general chillness global. All of this to say that this is more than a salad. While you could use the blueprint here to make so many kinds of quick fresh, warm salads in the summer this one in particular is full of pitta-pacifying ingredients that make it a perfect dish for summer.

• Zucchini (summer squash) — Sweet, cooling, light, high water content. Pacifies pitta and kapha due to its cooling/light qualities; can aggravate vata if eaten in excess or raw, since its lightness doesn’t ground an already-erratic dosha. Easy on agni (digestive fire).
• Corn — Sweet, drying, relatively heavy to digest.  Peak summer corn is juicy and pacifying to pitta, while corn out of season is drying and vata aggravating. Eat cooked, with plenty of ghee.
• Fresh dairy (milk) — Sweet, cooling, heavy, unctuous. Considered a strong ojas (vitality) builder and tissue-nourishing (rasayana). Pacifies vata and pitta; aggravates kapha, especially cold or in excess. Eat warm and melted, optimally.
• Ghee — Sweet, cooling in post-digestive effect (vipaka), light despite being a fat. Classically held as tridoshic — balances vata, pitta, and kapha — and is central to Ayurvedic cooking specifically because it’s considered to enhance agni rather than suppress it, unlike most fats. Also used as an anupana (delivery vehicle) for herbs, on the theory that it carries properties into deeper tissues.

This cooling zucchini + corn salad

Is summer at it’s best. Quick, fresh, flavorful, and easy whether you’re making from scratch or maxxing your leftovers.

I made the components in a pizza oven because our 1950’s mid-century modern home doesn’t have air conditioning. Turning on the oven is simply not reasonable. Cooking this way is FUN, adds an element of playfulness and automatically builds flavor into anything we cook. Leo LOVES when we use the pizza oven, and loved the couscous, zucchini, corn and cheese part of the dish. That said, as you’ll see in the recipe, you can easily make this recipe in a conventional oven if air con is something you enjoy through the summer.

The ingredients are local and seasonal across the Western Hemisphere from July – September, and this salad will be appropriate for that window after which time the season will start to shift and our cooling efforts will shift to transitional ones, so enjoy this one with reckless abandon until then!

In the recipe notes below, you’ll see that I invite you to choose your protein – we’ve made this dish with both roasted chicken and buratta and loved both. I don’t eat a lot of dairy, so the buratta feels like a special treat and adds a real groundedness to the meal. Enjoy as you wish!