The "salsa" girls!

What’s your pleasure – chunky or smooth?

I love to make a fresh chunky salsa and planned on sharing my recipe this week, but my friend Audrey from Pickpocket Farm pond gave me a recipe for roasted salsa from the Joy of Cooking. I tried that tonight and am a bit torn between which I like , the chunky fresh tomatoes, or roasted and pureed so I’m giving you a twofer today. You be the judge.  The roasted takes a bit more work, but it’s not difficult.

Chunky Fresh Salsa

The best part was making it with a little help from my daughter and my two nieces who are in town visiting.  We served this with some homemade chili and tacos with all the fixins’ and of course homemade guacamole.

Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa

Ingredients

1 lb tomatoes
2 large fresh jalapeno peppers
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
¼ teaspoon salt
½ small white onion, finely chopped, rinsed and drained

Roasted Salsa

Directions:

Heat the broiler. Arrange on a baking sheet: 1 lb red, ripe tomatoes. Broil 4 inches from the heat until they blister, darken and soften on one side, about 4 minutes; turn them over and broil the other side until blistered and darkened, 5 to 6 minutes. Meanwhile, heat a dry cast iron griddle or skillet over high heat, and add: 2 large fresh jalepeno peppers and 3 cloves garlic, unpeeled

Shake them in the pan until their skins are soft and charred here and there, 5 to 10 minutes for the jalepenos, about 15 minutes for the garlic. Let cool, then peel the tomatoes, reserving the juices, pull the stems off the jalapenos, and peel the garlic. Place the jalepenos and garlic in a food processor or blender with ¼ teaspoon salt.

Process to a coarse paste. Add the tomatoes and process a few times until you have a coarse-textured puree. Stir in: ½ small white onion, finely chopped, rinsed, and drained and 1/3 cup loosely packed fresh cilantro and about ½ teaspoon cider vinegar (optional).

Add 2-4 tablespoons water, if necessary to give the salsa a fairly thick but easily spoonable consistency. Taste and season with salt. (Joy of Cooking)

Fresh Tomato Salsa

Ingredients:

2-3 ripe tomatoes (or lots of cherry or sun gold tomatoes)
2-3 tablespoons of finely minced onion
1-2 tomatillos (optional)
2-3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro, or to taste
1-2 tablespoons Jimmy Nardello peppers (A sweet heirloom pepper) (optional)
jalepeno peppers, to taste (just 1 teaspoon or so if it is very hot!)
Lime juice (couple squeezes)

Instructions:

Chop up tomatoes and tomatillos and combine with onion. Add in cilantro, jalepeno and lime to taste. I added in the Jimmy Nardello sweet red peppers my last batch. They’re sweet and give it a little crunch. Enjoy!