Yum, SALSA!

We eat a lot of Salsa at our house. I've always loved it but it has lately grown on Axel as a quick tasty snack. We finally found a brand that we like but we go through it like crazy so I decided to try my own. This is one of the recipes I looked at to get an idea of where to start. After reading through it, it really did sound simple. I used ordinary tomatoes and added a roasted green pepper for color.

this is what went in

Ten handful-sized tomatoes (skins removed, 5 chopped, 5 pureed), one green pepper (toasted so it's easy to remove the skin), two chilies, three red and three white onions, five cloves of garlic and 1-1/2 teaspoons sea salt.

done cooking and ready to go in the jars

Cut a green pepper in eights and put under the grill to blacken the skins. I just set a cookie sheet on top to trap the steam and loosen the skins while I chopped the onions and roughly squished and chopped the garlic. These I sauteed while getting the tomatoes ready. Half were chopped, the other half pureed in the blender and added to the pan. The chilis were chopped very finely and added as well along with 1-1/2 teaspoons salt. Simmer until it is the thickness you would like.

After taste testing with Leah, next time I would add another chili, use 2 teaspoons salt and simmer until all the wateriness was gone.

Um, yeh, I don't think these first four jars are going to even see the water bath. Leah and I ate one, another will go into breakfast burritos for dinner tonight and I have no doubt we'll demolish the other two jars within the week.

If you've never tried making your own salsa I highly recommend it. It's really quite simple and you can play around to get the flavors you want most. Best of all no preservatives or thickeners - a big plus in my book!

For Better or Worse - Roasted Tomato Sauce

It was our anniversary last week, on Thursday, we had nothing in the house and planned to go out on Saturday night but I still wanted to make a nice dinner.

We had *nothing* in the house ... except ... a bowl of very ugly tomatoes. It all looked so promising. A week earlier I had taken these photos. See those huge, multi-forking branches of big, beautiful ready-to-ripen homegrown tomatoes?

Well, a week later they looked like this! We've had a very, very rainy August and it was just too much for the dear things.



Some had ripened enough though that I was able to trim off all the bad spots, a whole bunch of garlic and a few scallions for the best ever Roasted Tomato Sauce.

It's a breeze to make ...

To spice things up just a tad, I added one. Axel 
is not a fan of hot but I didn't even notice it. 
Tonight I'm going for two and hoping for just a 
tiny kick. We can all use a little spicing up, right?

1. Cut tomatoes in half or quarters and squeeze out seeds (optional, the first batch I didn't, the batch I'm making for tonight I did - I think it will just make the sauce just that much smoother and more enjoyable.) Oh wait, "how many tomatoes?" you ask ... Enough that the bottom of the pan is covered. I used a 9" x 13" baking pan and it made enough sauce for four hearty servings.
2. Peel and roughly slice four to five or more scallions.
3. Peel as much garlic as you can stand - I probably used about 7-8 gloves and it was very garlicky but yummy good.
4. Add a chili pepper if you like some heat.
5. Sprinkle with freshly ground pepper and a healthy drizzling of olive oil.
6. After about an hour at 200C / 400F it looks something like the middle picture, I gave it a stir and then just kept checking it every once in a while until it was starting to brown and most of the juices  had evaporated.
7. Blend the sauce until it is smooth, serve over warm pasta and top with grated parmesan (or in my case now that we've discovered the source of all my tummy troubles - mature goat's cheese).

It turned out to be a lovely evening, Axel opened a couple bottles of wine and we devoured my peasant meal. Sometimes it pays to have nothing in the house, it's often my most creative moments. Not that roasted tomato sauce is all that original but it did make me feel better about losing that glorious crop. Better luck next year .. and here's to another 14. Cheers!