Easy Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Salsa

With football season underway and the baseball playoffs moving quickly, it seemed a good time to write about salsa. The word itself has several meanings, but since I can’t dance without feeling – and probably looking – like Ralph Kramden doing the Hucklebuck, it seemed best to skip the Latin music and stay with the condiment of the same name.

There are a lot of choices to make when it comes to salsa, including: spicy or mild, thin or thick, tomato-based or not. As with anything we eat, one of the beauties of making your own salsa is that you can fashion it any way you want. Another of the beauties: recipes don’t get much easier than the ones used for making salsa.

The ingredients for this salsa recipe are simple. So is the preparation method: put the ingredients in a bowl and let them rest for a while. (Told you it was easy!)

Only two parts of this entire process even involve turning on the stove. The first is peeling the tomatoes. Place them in a pot of boiling water for about a minute, fish them out, and run them under cold water until they’ve cooled enough to be handled. The skins will peel off easily. The second is roasting the red pepper: click here to see a previous post for Chicken Pasta Primavera in which that was described.

So get out the tortilla chips (or click here for a recipe to make them fresh yourself!), or use the salsa for braising chicken, putting on burgers or omelettes, or for anything else you like. Just enjoy it!

This recipe makes about 3 cups of mild-medium salsa. Adjust the amount of jalapeno to the desired heat level.)

Peel, seed and dice 4 – 6 ripe plum tomatoes. Let rest in a colander to drain the excess liquid, then transfer the tomatoes to a large, non-metallic bowl.

Add the following remaining ingredients and mix well: ½ cup cooked sweet corn; 1 roasted red pepper, minced; ½ green pepper, minced; ½ cup onion, minced; 4 garlic cloves, minced; 1 teaspoon minced jalapeno pepper; 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro; 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice; 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice; ½ tablespoon salt; ¼ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper; and 2 – 6 tablespoons of tomato paste to desired thickness.

Let rest 30 – 60 minutes before serving. Gives all those nice ingredients a chance to get acquainted.

Hope you’ll visit again next week for another low-fat, fun and easy recipe! Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)