Silver Queen corn, a summer favorite of mine and perhaps for many of you, makes a fabulous corn salad with very few ingredients. Our family has a place at Lake Burton in Clayton, GA, and the local farmers' markets there are full of corn, okra, peaches, eggplant (both Japanese and standard), heirloom tomatoes, local dairy products, local beef and pork, and locally made sour dough bread. We all have access to farmers' markets throughout the U.S., this one just happens to be my favorite stopover during my stays there in the summer months.

I don't know about you, but I often buy everything that looks good to me (and usually too much of it!) and come home looking for recipes for what to do with all my produce finds. I recently read about and bought a beautiful new cookbook, The Love & Lemons Cookbook, an Apple-to-Zucchini Celebration of Impromptu Cooking by Jeanine Donofrio and Jack Mathews, a husband and wife collaboration perfectly organized with this in mind. It is divided into 26 chapters by produce type, and each chapter gives you a variety of recipes for each vegetable or fruit. Each recipe has a gorgeous photo to go along with it, and every recipe is very doable for weekday or weeknight cooking. They started with the "Love & Lemons" blog "to share not only my recipes but the idea of local seasonal cooking".

For the Corn Salad dressing, here is your list of ingredients:

Juice of one large lemon
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup white balsamic vinegar
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Combine all the dressing ingredients in a small bowl and blend with a hand blender or whisk until fully emulsified and set aside.

For the Salad, you will need:

5-6 large or 7-8 small ears of corn, Silver Queen if available
1 large or 2 - 3 small shallots, finely chopped
1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
3-4 tablespoons fresh basil, finely chopped

Boil the ears of corn for 5 minutes on high and drain immediately in a colander in the sink. This can be done ahead of time to give the corn time to cool off for easy removal of the kernels. Next, finely chop the shallots and red bell pepper and put in a medium-sized salad bowl. After grating the cheese and finely chopping the basil, take each ear of corn, stand it up on either end and carefully cut the kernels off the cob and add to the shallots and red bell pepper.

Add the dressing to the chopped ingredients, add the cheese and basil, toss everything together, season with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste, and serve at room temperature. This salad goes well with any other favorite summer salads, like Customized Caprese Salad, and grilled chicken or beef.

AS ALWAYS, I would LOVE to hear any comments or additions you may add to this simple summer corn salad!