Salsa!
Hi, Steph. I think your blog is pretty terrific. I’ve recently started climbing as a 40-something and you have provided me much inspiration and great tips via highinfatuation. Thank you.
So, we love to climb at Seneca Rocks, WV. This year The Gendarme school and climber’s shop there is having a salsa contest at their Cinco de Mayo party. I need a salsa recipe that climbers will love and that will win the glory of 1st place! (And if the salsa would bump my lead grade up a number that’s even better!)
I make the banana bread recipe on your site about every two weeks and my girlfriend makes the ginger cookie recipe almost weekly. We need an awesome salsa recipe, please! Do you have one?
Best regards,
Victor
Dear Victor,
Thanks for writing me! I love Seneca, oh, I hope this recipe works!!
As luck would have it, I make salsa almost every week. I love good salsa, and it is outrageously expensive to buy, and so cheap to make.
Here’s what I do:
get a few cloves of garlic, green onions, 1 serrano pepper, 1 anaheim chile pepper, lots of cilantro and your choice (depending on what you have) of either 1 large can of Muir Glen Organic fire roasted tomatoes, or fresh tomatoes, or even better, both.
If you are using fresh tomatoes, cut them in half and then squeeze all the insides out of them. It seems like a waste, but otherwise your salsa will be watery and unflavorful.
In the blender, put in about a third of your tomato matter, and then slightly chop up the garlic and some onions and one of the peppers, and pull off lots of leaves from the cilantro. Blend that all, but be careful you don’t end up pulverizing it, and then pour it out. Then add more tomato, the other chopped pepper, and more cilantro, and do one more round with the last of the tomato and cilantro. When it comes to cilantro, you can never have too much, in my opinion.
Once you’ve finished blending all the batches, stir it all together with a wooden spoon in your salsa bowl.
If there’s something you like more or less among those flavors, you can change it up.
Every once in a while I add apple cider vinegar and lime juice to my salsa, but not usually.
Even if you don’t win the contest, you will probably start keeping big bowls of salsa in your fridge like I do!
🙂 Steph
Awesome! Thank you so much! Will let you know how it turns out!
Best regards,
Victor
Do keep me posted! And let me know if you add any new secret ingredients 🙂
I am sorry but I am from México and the original mexican recipe does not squeezes all the insides of the tomate, you will loose all the “caldito” that is the best part.
Please, tell us your recipe!!
It just like you said but dont squeeze all the insides off the tomate, then you just dip the tortilla to get it moist and eat it.
Steph, the salsa won 2nd place! And while there was no prize for 2nd, it was great fun. Interestingly, the guy who won first place said his secret ingredient was the ‘ramp.’ Ramps are wild, native West Virginian/Appalachian leeks. He uses ramps instead of garlic and onions. I learned that in the spring there are festivals celebrating ramps and food made with ramps in Appalachia.
Oh, and the climbing was terrific at Seneca, too. Thanks again for the recipe!
Victor
yay!! and i have never heard of ramps in my life, so that is really interesting to know now! it sounds like you had a great time 🙂