Salsa anyone?

[Tractorgirl]

I'm pouring over the veggie catalogs trying to decide what to plant in the garden. Everything sounds great but for some reason--fresh salsa came to mind. I've never made fresh salsa but would like to can some at the end of the summer.

So, does anyone have any salsa recipes that are absolutely great? And if you do, please post away!!! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[egon]

Best start planting Tomatillos.

Egon

[theboman]

What's a Tomatillos?

Sounds like a Tomoatochip!

[egon]

Tomatillo link


Tomatillo

[Pat]

Last week I was in a market in San Diego CA where I was the only person who spoke English. I bought some nice fresh tomatillos and ajo too (garlic) and some yellow chilles and a couple limes. I also bought some marianaded thin sliced beefsteak (don't recall the Mexican name.) I sauteed an entire minced head of garlic (several cloves) in a little butter along with the chiles, juliened after removing the seeds and pith. I diced the tomatillos and added them to the garlic and chiles.

I reserved the vegies and pan cooked the meat in the liquid left in the pan. The thin meat was in 2-3 layers in the pan. When it was nearly done I returned the veggies to the pan and squeezed one of the limes over the pan. I reserved the other lime to garnish the glasses of Senorial Sangria, a sangria flavored carbonated soft drink. Mexican rolls heated in the oven with Mexican jack cheese and plenty of the sauteed garlic placed in the center accompanied the meal.

It was quite good. As this was an impromptu recipe-less meal I was pleased with the results and we decided it was a keeper. Most of my impromptu "free form" meals are edible, in fact the vast majority are at least a 3 on a 5 pt scale. This one was a solid 4.

For folks who like more vegies with their beef it could have been easlly extended in volume with the addition of more tomatillos, garlic, and chilies. It was quite flavorfull but not spicy hot, rather mild but with interesting contrasts of flavor.

Pat

[Bird]

Sounds like it might be related to fajitas (of which I am very fond), though a little different recipe. Sounds good anyway.

[txdon]

Tractorgirl, I love growing and eating salsa. Attached is a photo of my raised bed organic salsa garden. There are tomatoes, onions, garlic, and cilantro. Below is my salsa recipe:

Salsa recipe #7

3 cloves garlic chopped fine
¼ white onion
4-6 Roma tomatoes
juice from ½ lime
1-3 jalapeño peppers
Cilantro (about 30 leaves)
3 oz tomato paste (1/2 of a 6 oz can)
1 avocado
salt and pepper to taste

[egon]

Nice Garden. We still have a little snow laying around in the odd spot.

Egon

[Pat]

Bird, I have actually had fajitas once commercially made and twice at a friends home so am ill prepared to comment on them except apparently a wide variety of "stuff" is called fajitas (and they were good to eat.)

Every once in a while I just gather ingrediants as the spirit moves me and "invent" a dish or a meal. Any resemblance to any particular "named" or recognized entity is purely coincidental.

The market had 4-5 different labeled thin sliced beef (about 1/4 to 5/16 of an inch thick) and big enough to cover half a dinner plate. My culinary Spanish is too poor to translate the labels but apparently it was different cuts and different marianades or lack thereof.

I was on the road on the week end as part of my return trip from Baja to Oklahoma via San Diego. We stopped at a small nondescript Mexican fast food place along the way on I-10 where I was fortunate to find menudo (red) and had a delicious 32 ounce serving. They had all the traditional trimings EXCEPT oregano. Still, good eating.

Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Bird]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
I was fortunate to find menudo (red) and had a delicious 32 ounce serving

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One of these days, I guess I'm going to have to try menudo, but I'm not too sure. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img] The only times I've been around it, the odor was almost more than I could tolerate. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

But I do love the fajitas, both chicken and beef, although I prefer the beef. From what I've read about them, the originals were made with skirt steak, but I used round steak for the ones I made last week. And yes, apparently there are many different marinades used. I've never found any bad fajitas; just some better than others. And like you, I sometimes invent my own recipes, which in fact, is what I did with the fajitas last week. In the past, I've always bought the meat already seasoned, but wasn't sure what it was seasoned with. I'd also noticed quite a number of different "fajita marinades" in the grocery store, didn't know which ones would be best, and with my usual luck, when I went looking for some last week, not a single bottle of marinade labelled specifically for fajitas could be found.

So I simply cut round steak, across grain, of course, in thin strips, added bell pepper and onion, also cut in thin strips, and a little shopped tomato, marinaded it in Allegro Marinade for about 4 hours, then cooked it in a skillet on the kitchen stove. At the table, put that mixture in the middle of a warm flour tortilla, add a bit of chopped onion, chopped lettuce, grated cheese, and sour cream (my wife won't add the sour cream to hers [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img] ) and roll it up to eat.