Salsa To Order

I personally love my salsa more like a pico de gallo where the veggies are
fresh and chopped without touching a stove top.

My husband however prefers the cooked salsa from a jar. He likes a
“thick” salsa and says pico de gallo is too thin.

I should say he “preferred” the salsa from a jar until I began making
salsa to order.

As you can see this salsa will stick to a tortilla chip without
being cooked down for 2 or more hours.

I can cook this salsa in about 10 minutes. A longer cooked salsa does blend flavors,
but this “quick” salsa fits our lifestyle to a tee.

The reason I named this salsa “To Order” is because I use a
secret thickening agent and it gets thick in a heartbeat.

The secret agent is cornmeal.

Salsa To Order- recipe by Sue Edwards

1 large tomato (or 2 medium size),quartered
1 large hot pepper, seeded
1 medium onion, cut into quarters
2 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon fresh chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
pepper to taste
3 tablespoons cornmeal

Place all ingredients but the cornmeal in a food processor
and blend until chopped and chunky.

Place this in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

Boil about 5 minutes and then sprinkle with the cornmeal.
Continue to boil until thick, about another couple minutes.
Adjust salt, pepper and sugar to taste.

Pour into a serving bowl and cool to room temperature
to serve with chips.

Covered Up and Freezing

Freezing.

I am not talking about freezing weather but freezing fresh produce.

We are covered up right now in corn, tomatoes, and peppers. Some of my hot peppers are being frozen today because my bells and sweets are maturing a little slower (good thing for me or I might not get it all done!)

My favorite way to fix corn is to grill it while brushing melted butter mixed with fresh parsley or oregano, but I also have to freeze some corn to keep it from getting away from us.

tomatoes and corn

Freezing corn is simple. Just scald the cleaned ears in a covered pot of near to boiling water a few minutes. The corn will turn a bright orangey-yellow. Then transfer the hot ears to a cold bath of water before drying and bagging to freeze.

Peppers are even easier to freeze. Just gut them and wash and dry. Use gloves for hot peppers. Then bag to freeze.
Remember frozen peppers are only to used in cooking, because once they thaw they loose their crisp.

hot banana peppers and a few jalapeno

I have thrown some hot frozen peppers into salsa, because the texture of salsa sort of covers the softness, as long as you have some crisp onion to go in too.

Then the tomatoes are best roasted in my opinion( I am roasting some as I type), but you can freeze by dropping them into boiling water a couple of minutes then transferring to cold water. The skin will slip right off and you can bag them up to freeze.

With all this freezing going on today time was limited at lunch.

todays limited lunch