- Oct
- 19
Time to Salsa!
Posted by Kerry Anderlik at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
I love fresh salsa. I used to experiment with different ingredients and different recipes,but the most delicious recipe I have found is in Ingrid E. Newkirk’s Compassionate Cook vegan cookbook. It’s called Salsa Mexicana, and it’s really simple to make, with just four ingredients: tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cilantro. Although I’ve settled on Ingrid’s recipe as the perfect fresh salsa recipe, I still experiment with different varieties of tomatoes and peppers in my quest to try new salsas. Let me tell you what the secret kicker is: fresh vegetables from my own little garden.
And here’s how I do it:
During the dreary days of winter, I pore over seed catalogs to pick a few new varieties each year. I generally go for bush compact varieties with the earliest maturity dates. I start my pepper seeds and onion seeds in small pots in my living room window in early February. I start the tomato seeds, the cilantro seed, and onion sets in early April.
When it’s warm enough outside (generally in mid- to late May), I transplant the little plants outdoors into the garden, planter boxes, or permanent containers, as described by my fellow Prime blogger Elizabeth Bublitz in her post Animal-Friendly Gardening for City Folk.
By mid- to late summer, I make my first batch of salsa by chopping up cherry tomatoes, green onions, and cilantro. Later in the summer, I can add peppers. I’m a bit of a sissy when it comes to really hot stuff, so I often use sweet peppers and chili peppers rather than jalapeños.
There’s nothing like fresh salsa made with tomatoes, peppers, green onions, and cilantro from the garden or from containers on a sunny deck. And starting plants from seeds is a fun and inexpensive way to make delicious fresh salsa to serve with tortilla chips or as topping on bean burritos.
I have had success with just about any type of cilantro, which grows almost like a weed and even reseeds itself, and any type of onion works just fine (sweet, yellow, red, white, or bunching), but I have not yet settled on my favorite variety of tomato or peppers.
I would love to hear from PETA Primers about their favorite salsa recipes.
Posted to Home & Garden | Posted to Tags: gardening, recipes, salsa, Tomatoes, vegan
- Post this story to:
- Digg
- del.icio.us
- Newsvine
More:
Alicia says...
October 23rd, 2009, 6:11 pm
thanks very much, I’ll do the same this year in two balconies in Madrid. Spain. all the health to you.
Alicia
Cynthia says...
October 24th, 2009, 11:25 am
I love hot salsa. I use canned diced tomatoes because they have a softer texture.
canned diced tomatoes
chopped yellow onions
minced cilantro
crushed mixed peppercorns
cayenne pepper
sea salt
For guacamole I add avocado.
Cynthia says...
October 24th, 2009, 11:30 am
And don’t forget minced garlic!