Powerless, yet tasty!

I noticed this Powerless cooking event organized by the Simple Indian Food blog a few days ago and interpreted it as concocting a dish that basically used no source of power - including gas! Well, that was a tough one - especially given I was busy using my beater making the dough for some cookies that I was going to stick in the oven. Hmm, no chance of using that as a submission! :)

Well, yesterday was one of those "Not sure what I want to eat" days ... and yet, we didn't want to indulge in super elaborate cooking. After some puttering around, finishing up some dosa batter seemed like the quickest option. Maybe a chutney to go with it? Somehow, that sounded "lame" (usually chutneys are *never* lame! :)) and uninteresting.

And then, I remembered about the powerless cooking event and the obvious idea came to mind - a Southwestern black bean salad! I ended up marinating the vegetables for over an hour so I could get flavours to soak in without any cooking involved - the only reason I even thought the salad might need marinating was because I threw in some squash - never tried that before.

And this went really well with dosas. And with some tortilla chips - they worked perfectly for mopping up the remaining dresssing :)

Southwestern Salad
Nada power, mucho flavour!

Servings: 4

1 small red onion
2 roma tomatoes
1/2 yellow squash
12-15 pickled jalapeno slices
1 can black beans
1 T olive oil
2 T red wine vinegar
1 t red cider vinegar
a handful of chopped cilantro
salt
1 t red pepper flakes

Dice all the vegetables and toss them into a bowl along with the black beans.
Toss with the olive oil and vinegars.
Season with salt and red pepper flakes.
Marinate for about 1 hour.
Garnish with chopped cilantro before serving.



Off this goes to EasyCrafts!