Taste and Tattle Tuesdays: Restaurant-Style Salsa

Hi all! Colette here!

It's hard to believe September is just around the corner. With Labor Day coming up, here's a great side dish to bring to your end-of-summer pool parties and BBQs. I actually made and served this salsa at a party I hosted last weekend, and many people left asking me for the recipe. Well, here it is!

Colette's Restaurant-Style Salsa

What makes a salsa "restaurant-style" in my mind? For one thing, freshness. Ripe tomatoes and hand-squeezed lime juice are a party in your mouth, unlike canned/preserved salsas from a jar. (Don't get me wrong -- I'll eat pretty much any kind of salsa all the time. But fresh is best). Another thing is that it tends to be less chunky -- it's pureed, not chopped. That's how I make mine.

Ingredients

This is only some of what I used, thought what is pictured above is enough for an awesome salsa!

Four (4) large, ripe tomatoes
Three (3) small limes
One (1) whole jalapeno
One (1) jalapeno, seeds removed*
Two (2) tablespoons chopped white onion
1/4 cup chopped red onion
Two (2) tablespoons cilantro leaves (pre-chopped is fine)
Salt & Pepper, to taste

Tools

Knife
Cutting Board
Food Processor (small) 

Directions

(1) Gather and prep all of your ingredients. You can choose to chop a whole onion yourself or be lazy like me and buy the pre-chopped kind from Henry's. *wink* Make sure as you chop one jalapeno, the seeds stay inside, and on the other, you remove all the seeds.

Why de-seed a jalapeno? Most of the spice in peppers comes from the seeds inside. While the flesh of jalapenos is also spicy, removing the seeds will take the heat down a notch. Now, I like my salsa flaming hot, so I'd normally use 2-3 whole jalapenos. But like I said, this was for a party, and I wanted to please a lot of palates.

(2) Add some of the ingredients to the food processor. I don't mean just pick and choose -- I mean add a little bit of each ingredient that you have. This will allow everything to blend better. Start with about 1/3 of each ingredient that you have chopped/prepped (tomatoes, jalapeno, onions, cilantro). Squeeze the juice from one lime over the ingredients:

 (3) Pulse/chop for one minute. Repeat until all the ingredients are blended together:

That's it! Smooth and spicy, it's perfect for any party. 

Enjoy!

Taste and Tattle Tuesdays: Cold Entree

Good Morning, Foodies! Lauren here!

This week, we thought we'd feature a cold entree. I, however, don't do many cold meals (ahem! I blame the husband), so finding something that sounded yummy that is served cold posed a little challenge for me. I stumbled across a noodle dish, and since Asian food usually goes over well in our house, I gave it a shot.

Here's a link to the original recipe.

I did amend the recipe a bit. Whenever I follow recipes like this, I always find I don't have enough sauce, so I doubled the amount of everything, except the peanut butter.

Additionally, I added Sriracha (It's heaven if you like things spicy) and garlic. I knew I'd add sesame seeds and chow mein noodles at the end for garnish and flavor.

Tip: Never do anything just for garnish. Everything on the plate should be purposed to eat and add flavor. End of rant.  

Mix the ingredients together and bring to a simmer.

Another tip: taste and adjust. I found it was still a bit too much like liquid peanut butter, so I added more of my favorite ingredients. People often tell me they can't cook or stray from a recipe, but that's just not true. You know what flavors you like, right? Then, start there. That being said, I added more garlic and siracha.

The recipe calls for pasta noodles, but I chose Pad Thai noodles (they were on sale and I love them).

 Boil your noodles (always salt your water, but never put oil in the water or this Italian will judge you from afar). Normally, you don't rinse pasta, but it's okay to rinse Pad Thai noodles. Then, toss the noodles with the sauce; dish on a plate; and garnish with scallions, cucumbers (I julienned mine) and chow mein noodles.

Final thoughts:

1. If you want to make this recipe officially vegetarian, use vegetable stock/broth instead of chicken.
2. I added shrimp for protein, but you could do chicken or beef, too. 
3. You can serve this cold, at room temp, or hot. Because you can serve it at any temp, it makes a nice party dish or something to take on a picnic.

Enjoy!