Calabacitas roughly translates to ‘squash’. The multi-use dressing is made with hot sauce, citrus, garlic, honey and cilantro that is so good, you’ll be licking it off the the spoon, and has just the right amount of spice.
Squash has been used in Mexican cooking for thousands of years. Chayote (pear shaped) being the most used, but not so widely available. Zucchini being the closest substitute, but any summer squash can be used as they all are delicious with corn.
This recipe makes a lot of corn, 1. 75 quarts/7 U.S cups. It would serve 6 people as a side dish (4 tablespoons each) or 8 people if serving as a dip/salsa.
Not only is the dish multi-purpose, but so is the dressing. In addition to using the dressing in this salad, I also use it as I would a regular salad dressing, a marinade for beef, chicken or shrimp and a finishing sauce for grilled sliced meat. In fact, the sauce is so good it has it’s own page with the recipe. I call it Sonoran Jalapeño Lime Sauce.
The hot sauce I like to use for the dressing recipe is Arizona Gunslinger. A red jalapeño sauce that has just 3 ingredients: red jalapeño peppers, vinegar and salt. This is the same sauce I use on my Spicy Blue Cheese Potato Chips, which are potato chips topped with blue cheese and jalapeño hot sauce.
You can pretty much add to this salad what you want. Crumbled Mexican cotija cheese would be delicious or sliced cherry tomatoes. You can also top the corn with melted cheese and make it ‘con queso’.
