Monday, August 30, 2010

Roasted Tomato Salsa, aka, "What the heck are we going to do with all these tomatoes? Salsa"

Have you looked at your calendar for the week? If you haven't, let me let you in on something: On Wednesday, September arrives.

Holy cow, it is nearly fall.

Of course, our local weather has not looked at its calendar, for it is supposed to be in the mid-90s this week. Thank goodness for the pool still being open and air conditioning.

But yes, fall is just around the corner, which means the start of my favorite sports season of the year: college football. Thursday a lot of Buckeye fans will be sweating their behinds off (projected weather: High 94, sunny) in the Horseshoe while cheering the Buckeyes on to victory over ("We Are!") Marshall. Me? I'll be watching the game in the comfort of our home, nibbling on my current fave, this salsa.

Like many of you, we have lots of tomatoes and peppers in our kitchen, courtesy of the summer bounty. I already whipped up and froze a huge batch of Sweet Pea Pizza Sauce, so I moved on to salsa this weekend. This salsa is super simple if you use your food processor. Special kid friendly bonus: it is not chunky, ie, you kids may actually eat it without picking out pieces of onion or tomato. It also works like a charm in Taco Roll-Ups.

Roasted Tomato Salsa

2-3 large tomatoes, washed and patted dry
1 medium onion, sliced
1-2 banana or jalapeno peppers (depends on how spicy you like your salsa)
2-3 teaspoons lime juice
1/4 cup cilantro leaves (you can use stems too)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

In a dry (read: no oil) pan over medium high heat, place the tomatoes, onion and peppers. Let the vegetables sit for several minutes until they start to blacken. Turn, repeat and turn again. Make sure all your vegetables have a good char on them without being burnt:


Core the tomato near the stem, removing just the very center of the tomato (it should slide out quite easily).

Place the vegetables and the remaining ingredients into a food processor. Pulse until it looks like this:


Makes about 2 cups.

With fresh tomatoes from your garden or a local farmers market, this will be the best salsa you have ever made!

SPC

3 comments:

Jaime and Jen DISH said...

oh wow, that looks delicious!

Slacker Mama said...

Looks delish!

Dumb question: Do you "core" the tomato before throwing it in the food processor...or do you just throw the whole thing in there?

Sweet Pea Chef said...

Slacker--thanks for the reminder! I meant to add that to the directions. Will do so now...