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]

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