Making Fresh Salsa!

It is that time of year when all of your tomato plants are starting to go crazy and produce more tomatoes than you know what to do with.  So I have the perfect and delicious solution for you...MAKE SALSA!  Although I don't have my own salsa garden, my neighbors do. When they went out of town for vacation I offered to water their plants for them.  In exchange they told me I could have any of the veggies that the plants produced while they were gone...and it was allot.  I was eating them with my lunch at first, but there were just too many. So I decided to come up with my own salsa recipe.  It is super easy and fresh.  You can "tweak" it a little to your own tastes, but this will help get you started....enjoy!

Ingredients:

8-10 vine ripened tomatoes
1/2 yellow onion
2 jalapenos
3 fresh garlic cloves
1/2 lime
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
3 Tbsp. tomato paste
3 Tbsp distilled vinegar
1 handful flat leaf parsley (you can use cilantro if you like it, but I prefer parsley)
salt to taste ....i love allot of salt but Dominic doesn't, so I meet him halfway

First turn the oven onto the broil setting. Then get a big pot of water boiling for the tomatoes. Peel your garlic cloves, and wrap them in some tin foil, then simply place the 2 jalapenos onto a piece of foil un-covered. Put the garlic and jalapenos into the oven for about 12 minutes, or until the skin on the jalapenos is a little charred and starting to crack. Take them out of the oven, and place them aside to cool. When they are nice and cooled peel the skin off the jalapenos and remove the seeds.

When water in pot begins to boil add your tomatoes, and let them sit in there until their skin begins to crack. Remove the tomatoes from water and set aside to cool. They will be very hot so be careful.

In a food processor combine the onion, roasted garlic, and jalapenos. By using the pulse setting on your food processor, chop these ingredients to your texture of choice ( I like to be a little chunky). Remove these ingredients from food processor and place in a large bowl.

When tomatoes are cool enough to handle, peel all of the skin off and remove the tops of tomatoes. Place them all in the food processor with the parsley, and tomato paste and turn on pulse setting again to get your desired texture. When they are nice and smooth, add them to the bowl with the onion mixture and fold them in.  Now you can add all of the remaining ingredients. Vegetable oil, vinegar, lime juice, and salt.

This recipe can also be done without a food processor, or without cooking the tomatoes to have more of a Pico de Gallo version of this Salsa.

Now open up a bag of tortilla chips and a beer...and you have a meal!