Salad Bazaar - Trembácz Éva Zsuzsa

Cowboy Caviar — Straight from My Mother-in-Law’s Recipe Book

2025.07.04.2025.07.03. by evazsuzsa@gmail.com

I first learned this recipe from my mother-in-law, who lives in a small town in Nebraska’s Bible Belt, right in the heart of the United States. A place where cowboy hats and boots are part of everyday fashion, and where this vibrant, flavorful bean salad goes by the name Cowboy Caviar.

Two years ago, the Nebraska Tourism Board was brainstorming a unified brand and slogan. In the end, they stuck—slightly updated—with their classic line that’s been around since the ’70s: “Nebraska. The Good Life.” It’s what welcomes you on billboards when you cross into the state.

But what exactly makes life so “good” out here?

Life in Omaha’s modern downtown looks very different from the pace of small towns and rural farms, but across Nebraska, values like honesty, hard work, family, and community run deep. Though the state is twice the size of Hungary, fewer than 2 million people call it home. Rustic towns are separated by long, quiet stretches of road, lined with rolling hills, cornfields, and the occasional grazing cow, deer, or horse.

During the pandemic, I spent three months in a town called Thedford, right in the middle of the state. Locals call it a “small town,” though by most standards it’s more like a tiny village—just 240 people live there. We stayed a mile outside of town. The center has a grocery store, two gas stations, five churches, a spacious public library, a school, a hair salon, courthouse, a bar called Cowpoke, a small history museum, and even an art gallery. At the town’s edge sits a motel named Arrowhead, which is no coincidence—back in the ’70s, my husband used to find real stone arrowheads while playing outside, remnants of the Native tribes who once lived there.

The only proper restaurant in town is always packed—locals and travelers come for their signature steaks. There’s also an essential social hub: the gas station with its attached diner.

Here, the word distance takes on a whole new meaning. The nearest movie theater is over 60 miles away—same for the nearest hospital or supermarket.

But despite the low population, the sense of community is strong. The library offers children’s programs, seniors gather in the morning to play pool and board games, and every Thursday they share a meal at the senior center.

Is life good here? That depends on your expectations. But the locals swear by the closeness to nature and the strong sense of community. One thing’s for sure—my 8-year-old daughter loves visiting the senior club. And another thing: it’s rare to see a man here without a cowboy hat and boots. My husband might just be the only exception.

Of all my mother-in-law’s recipes, Cowboy Caviar has become a personal favorite. Sometimes called Texas Salad, it’s a delicious mix of beans, corn, fresh veggies, and a zesty dressing—perfect for any gathering, BBQ, or just as a hearty side.

Ingredients

For the salad:

1 can (15 oz) sweet corn, drained
2 cans (15 oz each) of different beans (e.g. black beans and kidney beans), drained and rinsed
1 large red onion, finely chopped
2 red bell peppers, diced
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
A few green onions (scallions), sliced
1 ripe avocado, diced
Fresh cilantro to taste, chopped

For the dressing:

Juice of 1 lemon (or 1 lime for a more traditional twist)
4–5 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (adjust to taste)
Salt to taste

Instructions:

In a large bowl, combine the corn, beans, red onion, bell peppers, tomatoes, scallions, and cilantro.
In a small bowl or jar, whisk together the lemon juice, olive oil, cumin, chili flakes, and salt.
Pour the dressing over the salad and gently toss to coat everything evenly.
Just before serving, fold in the diced avocado to keep it fresh and vibrant.

Pro tip: Let the salad chill in the fridge for 30–60 minutes so the flavors can meld beautifully. Serve as a dip with tortilla chips or as a side dish to grilled meats.

Preparation:

Chop all the salad ingredients into bite-sized pieces. To keep the avocado from browning, toss the diced pieces in a little lemon juice.

For the dressing, whisk the lemon juice together with the olive oil, then stir in the cumin, chili flakes, and salt.

That’s it! I fell in love with this salad from the very first bite – not just for the flavor, but also for the bright, colorful mix. It’s one of those dishes that brings joy to the table every time.

Pumpkin, Beetroot, and My Beloved Cantonese Market

2025.07.04.2025.07.03. by evazsuzsa@gmail.com

Beets and butternut squash – these are the two vegetables I adore à la nature, without even a pinch of salt. And in Guangzhou, finding them felt like winning the produce lottery under the rarest alignment of stars.

I biked to my beloved local market twice a week – partly out of my devotion to markets, partly to preserve my peace of mind. I loved the explosion of color: golden mangoes, cascading clusters of lychees, pink dragon fruit, piles of deep green broccoli and okra.

I was stunned at first to see eggs and meat left unrefrigerated even in the sweltering 36°C heat. But my Hong Kong friend, living proof that meat bought under these conditions can be consumed for nearly four decades without issue, helped me let go of my Euro-centric food safety standards.

Shopping during siesta time had its own challenges. Sellers lay napping on camping beds right under hanging slabs of pork shoulder or ham hocks. The air was thick and sauna-like, with men in half-pulled-up shirts lounging in the heat.

I also loved the vibrant little world surrounding the market itself. Men sat on tiny plastic stools at food stalls serving steamed buns filled with meat or sweet red bean paste, all in bamboo baskets.

Next to massage parlors, small shops offered a dizzying variety of teas – shelves stacked high with green, oolong, jasmine, and herbal blends. Then there was the favorite of the younger crowd: the juice stand, serving ice-cold guava, mango, and lime drinks to beat the Cantonese heat.

And the scene wouldn’t be complete without the giant green plants crammed onto the smallest balconies, adding to the lush, year-round greenery of the already tree-lined streets.

Back to where it all started—there were two vegetables I simply couldn’t find in Canton: pumpkin and beetroot. Both have long been favorites of mine, not only for their taste but for the cozy fall and winter feeling they bring into the kitchen.
But that feeling was completely absent in subtropical southern China, where even late November only slightly eased the 91–97°F (33–36°C) heat and 88% humidity. The coldest we ever got was a “chilly” 50°F (10°C) in January.

Now, here in Istanbul, the markets are overflowing with pumpkins and beets. In a spontaneous moment, I made this salad inspired by their aroma—and the color harmony amazed me. Even more so the scent: due to lack of time, I roasted the beets and pumpkin together, and with that, fall—finally arriving at a mild 68°F (20°C)—made its way into my kitchen.

Ingredients:

1/2 lb (about 9 oz) pumpkin, cubed
3 medium beets
1 handful baby spinach
5 oz cooked quinoa
2 tbsp crumbled feta cheese
2 tbsp pomegranate seeds
1 tbsp pumpkin seeds
A few sprigs fresh cilantro (or parsley)

Dressing:

Juice of 1 small lemon
4 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp mustard
2 tsp honey
Salt to taste

Preparation:

Once my kitchen filled with the divine smell of roasting veggies, I layered the baby spinach and cooked quinoa in a large bowl.
I chopped up the roasted beets and pumpkin, added a sprinkle of feta, pomegranate seeds, and pumpkin seeds, then topped it off with a bit of cilantro—because the color harmony just called for it.
For the dressing, I whisked together all the ingredients listed above and drizzled it on top.

The Final Result:

Corn Across Three Continents

2025.07.04.2025.07.03. by evazsuzsa@gmail.com

Nyíregyháza in the ’80s and ’90s

When I was a child, corn was never part of a proper meal – it was a summer snack, a salty treat, something that paired perfectly with thick wedges of watermelon.

On the outskirts of Nyíregyháza, a narrow road lined with arborvitae trees led to my grandfather’s house, where we grandchildren ran wild in the yard – climbing trees, swinging, jumping rope.

In the sweltering heat of July – because somehow, the short summer heatwaves always seemed to arrive in mid-July – we’d lean forward to eat watermelon, its juice running down our arms, before racing to the garden tap to rinse off the sticky sweetness.

After the sweet came the salty: hot, boiled corn.
Then I’d start the cycle all over again.
Maybe that’s when I fell in love with the sweet-and-salty combination – which, over time, grew to include the spicy and the sour, too.

My fondness for corn may also have been shaped by the scene across the yard, where golden ears of corn were hung to dry in a slatted wooden shed.
That shed, cool and dark, sometimes sent chickens scurrying out from underneath – and to my child’s eye, it always seemed a little scary.
But those sun-colored corncobs meant safety. They anchored the scene. They made everything feel okay.

Later, during my university years – when money was tight and meals were… creative – corn became one of my favorite little indulgences, right alongside bologna sandwiches and macaroni in meat sauce smothered with shredded cheese.

My best friend and I would drain two cans of corn, pour off the preservative-laden liquid, and mix the kernels with a small tub of sour cream (the kind with the bright red label) and just a touch of mayonnaise.
On better days, we even added a squirt of mustard for extra flair.

We were obsessed with it for years – and honestly, whenever I need a bit of emotional comfort, I still go back to that nostalgic corn salad.
It always helps me recalibrate my soul just a little.

2012 – Dakar, Senegal

I was expecting my daughter in Dakar, the capital of Senegal – the westernmost point of Africa.

In local culture, pregnancy isn’t something people announce publicly. One day, one of my husband’s colleagues walked into the office beaming with joy to share that his son had been born. He hadn’t even hinted for months that he and his wife were expecting.

As soon as I began to show, I was surrounded by extraordinary kindness. The vegetable vendor on the corner, Madame Joséphine, would always hand me an extra banana “pour le bébé”, thinking of the child as well. People let me skip the line, and shop assistants would carry my heavy bags out to the parking lot.

I also got my fair share of local superstitions. At seven months pregnant, I was eating a hard-boiled egg in the office when my French teacher rushed over, gasping, trying to stop me. According to local belief, if a pregnant woman eats an entire egg, the baby will be born mute.

I also learned that babies shouldn’t be tickled – apparently, it leads to stuttering. And if a child has hiccups, a piece of dampened thread is placed on the top of their head.

With Léna in a baby carrier strapped to my front, I learned firsthand why locals traditionally carry their babies on their backs: it’s believed to protect them from negative energies.

And yes, even in this new chapter of life, my beloved corn found its place.

Each morning, a young man would settle outside our office with a giant sack filled with fresh corn. Not just fresh – incredibly sweet and delicious, with golden kernels so flavorful that, thanks to enjoying them regularly with grapes, I managed to develop gestational diabetes in no time.

My Senegalese colleagues let me in on a little secret too: they cooked the corn in the microwave.

2020 – Guangzhou, China

Street corn is basically the Mexican cousin of the corn salad my best friend and I used to make during our university years.
Just like ours, it has sour cream – but what makes it really bold are the coriander, chili peppers, Mexican cheese, and a squeeze of lime.

I first encountered it on May 5th, during a Cinco de Mayo celebration, at our favorite Mexican restaurant.
What I once discovered back in my grandfather’s yard in Nyíregyháza – pairing sweet watermelon with salty corn – this dish took to the next level by adding two more flavors: sour from the lime and spicy from the cayenne pepper.
A touch of cheese, a dollop of sour cream, and fresh coriander make it even more irresistible.

We parted ways with that restaurant – and with the city – under bittersweet circumstances and with a very sour expression.
It was the day before we had to leave Guangzhou due to the coronavirus outbreak.
We didn’t know if we’d ever return (and as it turned out, we never did).

The restaurant, once lively and filled with guests and Mexican music, echoed with emptiness.
The usually bustling neighborhood had gone silent.
Aside from us, there was only one masked waiter and an English-language TV crew filming a report.

Still – I absolutely adore that Mexican corn salad.

Preparation:

3 ears of corn
1 spoonful of sour cream
Feta cheese
½ lime
A small spoonful of salt
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Fresh coriander

Boil or grill the corn, then cut the kernels off the cob.
Toss them with sour cream, crumbled feta, a squeeze of lime juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.
Finish with a generous handful of fresh chopped coriander.

I boil the corn, then cut the kernels off the cob.
I mix the sour cream with the lime juice, salt, and cayenne pepper, then stir it into the corn.
To finish, I sprinkle fresh coriander and crumbled feta cheese on top.

Peasant Food with a Twist: Spicy Potatoes from China

2025.07.04.2025.07.03. by evazsuzsa@gmail.com

It was my grandmother who first told me that potatoes were “the food of the poor” – cheap, long-lasting, and filling.
Luckily, they can be prepared in so many ways – and I love them all.

My love for potatoes was fueled early on by the experiences I gathered in my grandmother’s kitchen – and by her heavenly cooking.
Back in the 1980s, keto-protein diets and glycemic indexes were concepts no one had even heard of, and potatoes weren’t banished to nutritional purgatory. In fact, among the winter staples of the time – potatoes, carrots, onions, and cabbage – they had a place of honor.

On cold December afternoons, while the fire crackled in the stove and sparrows pecked away at the feeder outside, we would cook in the small room set up as a winter kitchen.
We fried potato flatbreads (krumplilángos), filled soft potato-dough pastries with thick plum jam and sautéed them golden in oil, and made homemade mayonnaise for potato salad – slowly, patiently, one drop of oil at a time.
I’ve never eaten a potato-based plum-jam pastry since, and despite all my searching, I’ve never found that recipe online.

Over the years, many recipes have come and gone, but my devotion to potatoes has never faded – and this spicy, peanut-topped potato dish you see in the photo only deepened it.
It wasn’t love at first bite, though. Despite having lived in China for six years, potatoes were never a prominent part of local cuisine – neither in Beijing nor in southern Guangzhou.
Among the astonishing variety of vegetable dishes, there was usually just one potato item on the menu: julienned potatoes in a spicy-sour sauce.
It was tasty, but between the numbing Szechuan-pepper cabbage, the stir-fried green beans sprinkled with bits of pork, and the perfectly crunchy broccoli, my love of potatoes took a back seat for a while.

What I loved most about life in China was that every day held something surprising, something unexpected.
In the narrow alleyways behind the hundred-story towers of Guangzhou – among old bicycles and laundry hanging from balconies – it felt as if time had rewound a few decades.

On a grimy hotplate at a Beijing street corner, I once had the best egg-and-chili pancake (jian bing) I’ve ever tasted.
In the summer heat, local men would roll up their shirts to proudly reveal their bellies.
At my favorite Beijing market, I once stumbled upon fresh curd cheese – and in a side street in Guangzhou, dried seahorses were being sold from a plastic bucket.

Each morning on my bike, on the way to work, I’d pass a woman in her sixties who always walked backwards.
In well-kept parks, small groups waltzed to cassette music, others did tai chi, and self-declared opera lovers sang their favorite arias out loud.

Kantoni sikátor — Guangzhou’s Narrow Street

Felhőkarcolók — Guangzhou, Seen from the Banks of the Pearl River

Csikóhal műanyagbödönből — Seahorse Vendor in Guangzhou

We stumbled upon a tiny second-floor restaurant in Guangzhou by pure chance.
It was tucked away and served dishes from western China – bold, flavorful, and unfamiliar.
That’s where I first tasted this spicy potato dish, and it was so delicious that I insisted we celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary with it.

I ended up recreating it in Istanbul, thanks to a weekend lockdown that gave me time to experiment.
Here’s how it went:

Ingredients:

500g potatoes, thinly sliced

For the sauce:

1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon flour
3 tablespoons oil
A thumb-sized piece of ginger
3 garlic cloves
1 hot chili pepper
150g peanuts
1 bunch of scallions
Fresh coriander

I baked the potatoes at 180°C (350°F) for 20 minutes, then tossed them in the sauce mixture.
After that, I stir-fried them in a wok with hot oil.
When they were about halfway done, I added the peanuts to let them toast a little.
I finished the dish with fresh coriander – though I admit I forgot to sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

To be honest, they didn’t turn out quite as crispy as the original version, so I’ll keep experimenting.
At my husband’s request, next time I’ll even add numbing-hot Szechuan peppercorns for that authentic fiery kick!

Green Beans and Kung Fu Panda

2025.07.04.2020.09.25. by evazsuzsa@gmail.com

Nyíregyháza, 1980s

Growing up, I only knew them in two forms: dill-infused green bean soup and dill-infused green bean stew. I wasn’t a picky eater at all, but these two dishes made it onto the very short list of foods I just couldn’t stomach—because of one culprit: dill. Its smell alone could drive me out of the kitchen.
Where I’m from, in Szabolcs (Eastern Hungary), we called green beans long beans, and they weren’t even green—they were pale yellow, unlike the deep green, buttery sautéed kind that started showing up in the ’90s.

The real turning point in my relationship with green beans came thanks to a Chinese dish called gan bian siji dou—dry-fried green beans with garlic, chili, and umami-rich flavors. Ever since that first bite, I’ve been hooked. I could honestly eat it every single day.

Beijing, Late August 2008

We moved to Beijing just one month before the Olympics.
At the time, the nearly 20-million-strong metropolis was bustling with preparations. Architecturally fascinating structures awaited the athletes: the iconic Bird’s Nest stadium and the ultra-modern glass complex known as the Water Cube, which later became a venue for classic concerts.

The city was shrouded in a gray, apocalyptic-smelling smog that authorities were desperately trying to combat. They launched silver iodide rockets to seed rain over Beijing—an infrequent sight in this arid city—in hopes the precipitation would wash away the pollution streaming from factories.

But getting rid of that massive smog cloud was far more complicated than just a few rainmaking rockets.

Madárfészek - Peking 2008 — Bird’s Nest – Beijing 2008

I took the newly opened subway through the gray, sprawling city to get to the swimming pool. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience to see Tibor Benedek, Tamás Kásás, and the whole team in person—wrapped in Hungarian flags, cheering for the water polo team, and listening to the national anthem ring out amid the Chinese crowd.

The weeks following the Olympics were equally unforgettable, as I immersed myself in Beijing and its cuisine: I took cooking classes in the hutongs, those narrow gray-brick alleyways built in the 13th and 14th centuries. There, I learned the recipe for spicy green beans cooked with Sichuan peppercorns—a dish that completely transformed my relationship with green beans.

And I also learned that one kitchen knife is enough for a household—but it better be big and wide, just like Kung Fu Panda said.

Ingredients:

1 lb green beans
5 oz finely chopped chicken (ground pork can be used as a substitute)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp fresh ginger, minced
1 tsp Sichuan peppercorns – the heart and soul of this dish! It numbs your mouth and tongue, but once you get used to the sensation, it becomes a lifelong love. I promise!
Dried chili peppers (to taste)
Soy oil (or any neutral cooking oil)
Salt

Preparation:

Heat a small amount of oil over medium heat and sauté the green beans just until tender. Remove and set aside.
Turn the heat to high and add more oil. Stir-fry the garlic, ginger, and dried chili peppers briefly.
Add the chopped chicken, sprinkle in the Sichuan peppercorns, and add a splash of soy oil. Cook until the meat is done.
Return the green beans to the pan and stir-fry until the middle parts of the beans turn a deep brown.

Serving suggestion:
In China, this dish is typically served alongside steamed rice or meat dishes with lots of vegetables.