wombat1138 | Salsa experiments (Reply)

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.