Make a Meal: Chimichurri Salmon with Black Bean-Corn Succotash

The first weekend in August, Mr. Max and I decided to head to New Orleans for the weekend. For a self-proclaimed food lover, this was a wonderful and delicious adventure! We ate a little too well all weekend, trying to take in the tastes and culture, with the many Creole/Cajun and French influences. This meal is a dish I saw on the menu of Emeril's NOLA restaurant but didn't get to try, so I thought I could bring the idea home to recreate it myself and see how that worked out. Friends, it worked out real nice...

Before I had time to create this post, a coworker and I were swapping dinner/recipe stories and asked me to send her the recipe because she wanted to make this. I told her I didn't have time to post yet but would let her know when ready. Though, as we kept chatting, I realized just how easy this was to make and was able to spout it out from memory. One of the best lessons I've learned is to not let a recipe fool you - it may sound difficult but it is really so very easy. Letting the salmon bake was the longest part of the process and something I should have put in first so by the time it was done, the rest of the food would be too!

Grocery List:
For Salmon

• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 fresh Atlantic salmon fillets

For Chimichurri

• 6 cloves garlic
• 1 big handful of parsley
• 1/4 cup red onions, diced
• 1/4 + 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 2 tbsp. red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp. lime juice
• Red pepper flakes to taste (optional)

For Succotash

• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 cup frozen sweet corn
• 1/2 can black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 cup tomatoes, chopped
• 2 tbsp. hatch chile pepper, diced
• 2 tbsp. cilantro, chopped
• Juice from 1/2 lime

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees and go ahead and brush your salmon with olive oil, season with salt and pepper.

Now we start on the chimichurri... combine the garlic, parsley and onion in the food processor and grind until well blended like below.

Remove from food processor and into a mixing bowl and stir in the olive oil, red wine vinegar and the lime juice. Add red pepper flakes if you want a bit of a kick, it really helps to provide some depth to the flavor! Place this bowl in the fridge until ready to serve over the salmon.

At this time, put your salmon in the oven and set the timer for 15 minutes. My apartment oven is becoming more and more difficult, so I ended up cooking mine closer to 20 minutes but you start at 15 and go from there.

When the salmon starts in the oven, you start your succotash. What is succotash? Well, I had to look this up because I really didn't have a clue and found that it is a dish containing corn and some kind of shelled bean, other ingredients may include peppers and tomatoes. Ok, that really sums it up perfectly, as evidenced by the grocery list. Here's another sidenote fun fact: remember Sylvester the Cat with the spitting lisp from Warner Brother's Looney Tunes? One of his catch phrases was "suffering succotash" as he spit all over the place. Don't imitate when cooking, or ever please, just know that random factoid. Back to succotash.... take your olive oil and heat in a skillet, then add the garlic over medium heat for about 3 minutes. Add in the corn and let cook for 5 minutes, followed by the black beans and tomatoes.

Add the hatch peppers followed by the finishing touches, the cilantro and lime juice, right before serving. The reason you want to wait on the last two are because all the other ingredients can sit on the stove for a while but the cilantro is the last important garnish and we don't want the lime juice to evaporate sitting on the stove for more than a few minutes.

When the salmon is ready, spoon the chimichurri sauce over top and place over a bed of the succotash. Mr. Max gave me an emphatic "wow" at first bite - I'll take that as an approval!