Friday, October 8, 2010

Golden tomato salsa

Look at these perfect beauties Amanda grew in her garden. At a posh Seattle grocery store, these would be "heirloom-organic (blah blah blah) tomatoes, $5.95 a pound."

So, what to do with them? I was determined not to waste a single one.
Salsa sounded like a good idea, and buried in my cookbook shelf I found an old booklet about home canned salsa, published by the State Agricultural Extension (is there still such a thing?) It had many stern warnings about not changing recipe ingredients like lemon juice and vinegar, for fear of poisoning your family. Anyway, I started chopping. First the tomatoes...
Then the peppers and onions.
You add the vinegar (carefully measured, of course) spices, garlic, etc. and let it cook down for about an hour. Now, while slicing tomatoes are delicious, I've learned from experience they're a bit watery for salsa and pasta sauce.
So this recipe adds 3 cans of tomato paste to thicken. (I don't think that's cheating.) With all those fresh hot peppers, the taste was wonderful. Let me know if you want the recipe.

We like salsa on just about everything, and this would be especially good on Sunday morning eggs and potatoes. Best of all, I still have enough yeller tomatoes to make another batch of tomato-pear chutney tomorrow.

2 comments:

  1. yum, yum! I am glad that they found such a good use! Can't wait to enjoy your salsa in the middle of winter when we are dreaming of a nice tomato!

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  2. Like the flowers, you wish you could have just one garden tomato come December. But salsa and chutney is the next best thing!

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