Salsa Fresca

My husband is not really at home in the kitchen. He can find his way around the kitchen, make enough food to survive, but he has no real passion for it.

Usually.

Once in a blue moon, a recipe will jump out at him, or a craving will strike him. Either must be addressed immediately. This has resulted in learning how to make shredded chicken. In making burgers "just because." The good news for me is that he *usually* makes these things himself and I get to share in the creation. The bad news? I have to shop/help.

A few weeks ago, Tim came to me with the food section of his newspaper. He was excited about the salsas. He wanted to make them - especially the Salsa Fresca. I added the ingredients to our shopping list, and a few days later, he was chopping and dicing and soon had created a fresh-smelling salsa that we devoured. We paired it with tacos for dinner, and it was delicious. We left out the crushed red pepper, but the salsa was tangy and not too hot at all, even with the green chiles.

Ingredients:

2 medium tomatoes, chopped

1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1/2 small red onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, crushed

One 4-ounce can diced green chiles or 1 jalapeno, chopped

2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper



Directions:

Combine chopped tomatoes, lime juice, red onion, and remaining ingredients in a large bowl.

Cover and chill at least 1 hour.

Makes 2 cups

Source: The Bradenton Herald

Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

Mike's boss, Lara, recommended this blog to me a couple of months back. Unfortunately, it was right around the time that Molly was taking a blog sabatical of sorts, but now she's back in action!


Lara has read Molly's book, which is now on my Amazon wishlist, and she was nice enough to pass along this recipe to me as a sneak peak of what I will find when I finally read it. I made these slow-roasted tomatoes over the weekend (and then snacked on them all week).


Ingredients


3.5 pounds of Roma tomatoes (probably about 20 tomatoes)
1 tablespoon olive oil (maybe a bit more)
Salt
Coriander


Directions


Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Slice ends of Romas off, and then cut in half. Place in a large bowl and drizzle oil over. With hands, mix them up so the oil coats them:

Place cut side up on baking pans/sheets. (Lara and I both greased the baking pans first.) Take a pinch of salt (Lara used kosher; I used regular table salt) and sprinkle on tomato halves (one pinch is good for about 4 halves). Take a pinch of Coriander and sprinkle on tomato halves (on pinch is good for about 4 halves).

Place in oven and roast for 4 - 6 hours. (Lara set the oven to 250 and roasted for 3.5 hours and covered in foil to take to a friend's for 4th of July. She figures they probably continued to cook in that environment for a little while longer). I roasted mine at 200 for a little over four hours:

Tomatoes will shrink to 3/4 or 1/2 their size (they will not look like sun dried tomatoes). Cool to room temperature and then eat. They keep in the fridge for about a week.

You can make more or less than this amount. I only used about 12 tomatoes, which made a good amount for two people to snack on all week. Lara thinks these also would be good on some crusty bread with cheese and basil or spinach. I think that's a brilliant idea.

They're so good. I'm a huge fan of tomatoes, so this is a great snack for me. I've eaten them as a side with lunch and dinner, and I've cut some up and thrown them on salads.

Source: A Homemade Life, by Molly Wizenberg