Need A Great Side Dish For Chicken, Fish, Pork or Beef?
We all have our favorite main courses. I like to pan fry, grill or roast chicken breasts, pork tenderloin medallions, fish filets like cod, scrod, tuna or swordfish but I’m always looking for a great side dish to serve with them.
Last night we prepared a meal from Blue Apron, the company that sends you portion controlled ingredients for three separate meals with fantastic recipes. I like this outfit and I need to do a review of their services soon.
I have my pros and cons with these guys but I’ll warn you right now, every Blue Apron meal we’ve prepared requires a fair amount of prep and this is not a bad thing. We are used to cooking with a lot of prep in our house so we don't mind the zesting or picking leaves off herb stems before chopping but if you are looking for "heat and serve", this is not the right outfit for you.
The main dish was pan-seared cod served with a combination of fresh corn, green beans and tomatoes. Summer corn is still available at our local market and it’s still sweet but I don’t think it’s going to last much longer.
The cod was topped with these very cool pickled grapes that I’ll talk about and provide a recipe in another post. What I really liked about the grapes is they offer both a tart and sweet flavor in the same bite.
These grapes are much easier to prepare than you might think and don't take long at all to produce. I’ll be adding them to many of my future recipes.
Succotash
Blue Apron calls this side dish summer succotash so I’m guessing any combination of sweet corn with a shell bean can be called succotash. I always thought succotash had to have lima beans as one of the ingredients but I was wrong about that. There are lots of variations when it comes to succotash.
Think about it. You could combine corn with any shell bean and call it succotash and the list is long; lima beans or sometimes called butter beans in the South, kidney beans, cranberry beans, cannellini and great northern beans, soldier, and pinto beans.
📖 Recipe
Fresh Corn, Green Bean and Tomato Side Dish Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 large shallots peeled and thinly sliced
- 4 cloves garlic finely minced
- 6 ounces green beans trimmed and cut into ½ inch pieces
- 2 ears fresh corn kernels removed
- 2 large fresh tomatoes cored and diced
- salt & pepper to taste
Instructions
- Wash and dry all the fresh ingredients. Remove the corn from kernels using a paring knife or a very cool gadget to remove corn from the cob. Discard the cob.
- Mince the garlic and thinly slice the shallots, trim the green beans and cut them into ½ inch pieces.
- Core the tomatoes, cut into quarters and remove the seeds. Dice the rest of the tomato into small pieces.
- Heat up a medium sized non-stick pan over medium heat until hot, add oil and when it gets hot add the shallots and garlic. Cook for a minute or two until the shallots soften and the garlic becomes fragrant. Prevent burning by stirring frequently.
- Add the corn and cut green beans, stir and season with some salt and pepper. Cook for 8 - 10 minutes, again stirring frequently to prevent any burning.
- Add the tomatoes and cook for 3 - 5 minutes until the tomatoes soften. Again, stir frequently to prevent burning.
- Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper, to taste.
- When plating, spoon some of the vegetables onto the center of a plate and top with a cooked piece of fish, chicken or your favorite meat cut and top with some sort of garnish.
Diane L.P.H.
I was raised on a northern Midwest dairy farm. We called corn mixed with any bean - green thru any variety of mature bean - succotash. Personally, I like the green bean best. I like this recipe with the addition of garlic and tomato.
G. Stephen Jones
Diane, thanks for that info and I will have to add some garlic and tomato and test it out on the family.