Salsa experiments

[wombat1138]

jennifer3dtd brought over some yummy heirloom-tomato salsa from her local farmers' market last weekend, toward the end of her trip. It lasted for two days before we ended up forlornly licking the empty container :)

After that, I sprang for one of those "salsa kits" I've been seeing at Trader Joe's, small boxes of fresh veggies to be chopped up and mixed together: 3 Roma tomatoes, 1 jalapeno, 1 lime, several cloves of garlic, and a shallot. The result was... uninspiring; there was nothing actually *wrong* with it, but there was no oomph to be had-- partially because I scraped out the jalapeno seeds to minimize the heat for the trial run, but partially because it just needed more flavor.

This morning at our own local farmers' market, I figured I might as well try again, and bought various ingredients: Shady Lady tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, fresh corn, and a bunch of cilantro. We already had a lemon, some garlic, and some shallots at home (I'd bought extra shallots at TJ's with the kit, on the principle that I have no clue about shallots so I might as well buy a little bag of them that was already clearly labelled "shallots"). The result this time is definitely more inspiring.

I think it involved 3-4 large tomatoes; before dicing, I halved each one along the equator and squoze out the seeds/juices into a separate small bowl to make the chopping process less messy, but dumped the small bowl of liquid back into the main batch near the end. 4-5 cloves garlic, minced; about 1/3 of the cilantro bunch, minced; a small twinned shallot, minced, 1 lemon, juiced. I left the seeds inside 2 of the 3 jalapenos that were minced, and also sliced the kernels off one ear of fresh corn. Some random amount of salt was also stirred in.

Since this made a *lot* of salsa-- at least a quart-- and we're heading out in a few days for a short vacation, we'll probably bring the whole batch to travelingtiger's and recursive's joint birthday/housewarming party tomorrow. I'll definitely make another batch of this stuff after we get back, though.

Comments

[jennifer3dtd.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked the farmers' market salsa. :) I didn't even like salsa until I tried their stuff. Their salsa = hella addicting. Note: you really need to eat the stuff right away. After a few days in the fridge, the cilantro tends to do weird things to the overall taste, imo.

Btw, I handed you their "hot" salsa. Their "corn" salsa is milder, but has the most utterly sweet and charred-just-right corn in it. *droooooooooooool*

When you get back from vacation, maybe you and Jon can go to a farmers market that sells their salsa (and other stuff) -- according to their website, there are two that are near you (?). Here's their list:

Blossom Hill CFM
Daly City, Thursday CFM
Daly City, Saturday CFM
Moraga CFM
Morgan Hill CFM
Mountain View CFM
San Francisco, Crocker Galleria CFM
San Francisco, Park Merced CFM
Saratoga CFM

I'm kind of bummed I forgot to write down the ingedients as printed on their label. So if you do get more of their stuff, would you please email me the list of ingredients on their packaging?

[jennifer3dtd.livejournal.com]

Duh.. forgot to throw in that post that they are "Swank Farms." Just in case you don't remember. Okay, now you can go hunt them down at a nearby farmers market!

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

*argh* I think I still have the empty container in our recycling bin... but not the lid, which would've had all the info printed onto it. I'll see if I can track them down; looks like the Mt. View market is on Sunday, so maybe next weekend?

[jennifer3dtd.livejournal.com]

muahahawhoohoo -- are you going to go on Sunday? Need me to send you a reminder email? Are you going to do what I do, which is buy one of the corn and one of the hot? (IIRC, mild and hot = $5/ea. Corn = $6/ea.)

Gah -- now I'm craving the stuff, and there's no way I can have any.


PS We've also bought from their table: corn, peas, tomatoes, and cherries. But I don't think these specific items were any better than what you can get at the good tables at your local farmers market. (Altho I have gotten really good orange tomatoes there... *drool*) Really, it's all about their salsa.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's possible that I might find them on Saturday-- I think I've seen one booth with a sign for free samples of heirloom-tomato salsa but've never gone over there because they're always mobbed :) Swank Farm's site does also mention the San Mateo market, but as part of a subsection about one of the associations they belong to, so I don't know whether they actually do go to all of those places or not.

Meanwhile, have discovered that with the addition of more corn, this salsa recipe can be reasonably eaten with a spoon straight out of a bowl, somewhat like a chunky gazpacho seasoned with cilantro instead of basil. Chunks of bread could probably also substitute for the extra corn, but I had extra corn so that's what I used. After cutting off the kernels, saved the cobs for stockmaking; the pot simmering at the back of the stove should be ready to drain off by this evening, and based on prior experience is likely to be very spicy because of all the jalapeno seeds that went into there.

(Rediscovery: capsaicin from slicing jalapenos stays on your fingertips for a looooong time, despite however many times you scrub with soap and water. You wake up real fast the next morning when the contact lenses go back in. Owwwwwww.)

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Yay, they were at our local market this morning after all :) I only got their corn salsa this time because I walked there and forgot to bring a tote bag; here they were charging a flat $5 for whatever version.

Ingredients in order of weight (which may make it difficult to estimate how exactly much light floofy stuff like chopped cilantro/garlic to put in, though OTOH I'm inclined to think that the exact ratio isn't crucial as long as you like the taste of the final result): heirloom tomatoes, peppers, corn, onions, cilantro, jalapeno, lime juice, garlic, and salt.

Some notes from eating initial samples (which have worked out to about half of the container so far :) chips? who needs chips, I'm eating it plain out of a bowl with a spoon)-- I really can't identify any pepper bits in there by sight or taste, so they must be red peppers that're completely camouflaged by all the tomato around them. The onions are red onions; I'm not getting a lot of smokiness from the corn, although I can see the little scorch marks on some of the kernels and it definitely has a slightly different taste from my raw-corn variation, which is... milkier somehow? both wrt the liquid that pools out from the solid salsa chunks and the somewhat sweeter taste.

They're not using as much garlic or jalapeno as I did in my latest batch, which also has a lot more corn (3 ears this time, not just one). Lemon juice vs. lime juice makes a slight difference, but imho not a really major one; I'm also still hazy on the difference between shallots and normal onions. Their salsa is *very* swimmy and liquid, though I've discovered that drained-off salsa juice is pretty tasty mixed into tzatziki. And for yet another hot-weather meal, leftover fresh cilantro can be cooked into a largeish batch of rice, which can then be stuffed into the fridge to nuke small portions of later and then pour some salsa on top.

[jennifer3dtd.livejournal.com]

Haha, I can totally support your eating the salsa with a spoon. :) The chips I liked to use with this salsa was one I got from Safeway: La Tapatia California Style No Salt Added tortilla chips. It's kind of hard to find, what with it being dwarfed by the 5 zillion brands of Tostitos, but look for the bag that has a drawing of a young woman on her knees doing what I think is grinding corn. It's more expensive than Tostitos, but I think they go great with the Swank salsa.

Man, we'd have to pay $6 for the corn salsa. Although R points out one time we only paid $5. Good on you for getting the goodness for cheaper. Also I'm wondering if grilling the corn takes most of the moisture away, which is why theirs is less corn-milky?

Thanks for listing the ingredients. If I can get them here (obviously the heirloom tomatoes will have to be plain tomatoes), I'm going to give it a try. Er... just occured to me they may not have proper tortilla chips here. Ah well, it'll be a nice distraction from winter nonetheless. (Are you saying they're using shallots and not onions?)

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

The little pre-assembled box of ingredients I got from Trader Joe's had a shallot in it, so I've been using shallots for my own version. Swank Farms seems to be using red onions instead, but I couldn't say what sort of difference it makes to the taste-- I suppose shallots are slightly sweeter and not quite as sharp, but it's not really something that leaps out from the general salsaness.

wrt chips, heh, we've been eating Tostitos :) Usually when Jon buys chips to eat on his own, he likes the blue corn ones from TJ's, but this time I bought the baked "Scoops" subspecies of Tostito-- they're like teaspoon-sized little tostada shells, so each one can hold, well, about a teaspoon of salsa (incl. the salsa juice) if you scoop carefully, instead of trying to balance a few little chunks on a flat triangle. I think there's also a fried "Scoops" type, but we haven't bothered with those. I don't think we've tried La Tapatia chips yet, though, so maybe next time.

The grilled corn kernels had a slightly different mouthfeel than raw ones, which are sort of lightly crunchy; the grilled ones didn't crunch and were a bit chewy instead, so yeah, maybe they are a bit drier. The grilling would also "kill" whatever enzymes are floating around in live corn-- I think they convert sugar to starch when fridged?-- but otoh I haven't noticed the sweetness of the raw-corn salsa changing very much, so the acidity of the salsa juice could've killed the enzymes too.

I've just been using whatever the main big tomatoes at the farmers' market have been, but they're still pretty tasty :) On Saturday, I got a baglet of the the cutest little mix of heirloom *cherry* tomatoes... they look neat and taste great, but I can't really say I've noticed *that* much flavor diff between them and the default tomatoes. As long as your tomatoes are really ripe instead of pink tennis balls, their variety shouldn't matter too much, I think?

[jennifer3dtd.livejournal.com]

Re: shallots. I've cooked with shallots once last year. They struck me as being less chemically than a standard onion (in that my eyes didn't water as much), but maybe it was just the shallots I bought, not a property of shallots in general.

I used to eat Tostitos, and I liked the "scoops" the best. But sometime last year, I got tired of the uber-saltiness and uber-flakiness of Tostitos. Mind you, there were moments when I was craving salt like woah, and then Tostitos really hit the spot. But for salsa, I really liked using those Tapatia no salt California style chips.

Aw yes, heirloom cherry tomatoes are prettier than heck (I would fantasize about throwing a dinner party, just so I could display those pretties in a nice bowl), but I think the heirloom normal tomatoes have that lovely taste.

Erg, here the tomatoes are starting to get the mid-winter-import blahs, where the skin may act like it's ripe or over-ripe, but the seeds inside are still green. Ah well, it's better than being in a heatwavesays I, through clenched teeth ;P