A Salsa Story

Earlier this week, Dr. Love notified me that he had signed me up for a contest at his work.  Well not me, exactly...he had signed my salsa up for a homemade salsa contest in celebration of the Cinco de Mayo holiday. The problem with this, my friends, is that I have never made salsa before. Sure, I have enjoyed hundreds upon hundreds of different kinds during my life, and sure I love to cook...but I have had no clue how to make a homemade salsa. After asking Dr. Love a few follow-up questions and doing some brief Google research to make sure that I was not getting myself into some crazy complicated thing, I confirmed my participation. Being the graceful lady that I am, I high-fived Dr. Love and yelled out, "In it to win it!! Let's do this, baby!"

I was all fired up with the excitement of learning how to make something new (and something that I like), but had no idea where to start. So, I spent about thirty minutes Google-ing until I found a recipe (here) that seemed manageable to me and had a good list of preparation instructions with pictures. I then brainstormed about things I wanted to change or add to the recipe based on flavors that Dr. Love and I enjoy.

The following is my salsa story:

First, I grabbed my main ingredients from the fridge...

Orange, Red, Green Bell Peppers; Globe Tomatoes; Nature Sweet "Cherubs"/Cherry Tomatoes (not pictured); Red and Green Jalapeno Peppers (not pictured); Serrano Peppers (not pictured); White Onions; Cilantro; Garlic; and Lime.

 And rinsed the items that required rinsing...

I then peeled one onion (recipe called for two, but I decided to go with one), halved it, sliced it, and diced it...

Here's how I diced the onions...The first step after halving the onion is to make cuts all the way across the onion (I go right to left), but without slicing all the way through with the tip of my knife. That way, even after the slices are made, the onion half remains intact...

I'm pretty sure I learned this method of dicing onions years ago from watching Giada de Laurentiis's "Everyday Italian."

I then rotated the onion 90 degrees so that the uncut side faces my hand and the sliced side faces the knife and is perpendicular to it. I then slice all the way across the onion going from right to left...

 Easiest way to dice onions, in my opinion. Thanks Giada!

Once my onion was diced, I turned my attention to my three-ish cloves of garlic. While I used three cloves, two were very small (as seen below), so it's more like I used two. If I remember correctly, the original recipe called for three cloves, but that just seemed like too much to me. 

I then removed the skin from my cloves by lining them up, holding my knife down flat on them, and then smashing down on the knife with my other hand.Two things to note with this maneuver: (1) be very careful to not smash your hand down on the sharp edge, and (2) I'm pretty sure I owe Giada a shout-out for this idea too.  By smashing down on your garlic cloves, you cause the garlic skin to crush making it easier to remove. It basically falls right off...

After peeling my garlic, I cut the ends off each clove (I'm pretty sure you only have to cut off the rough end, but I do both out of habit), sliced the cloves, and then minced them. 

 

 For me, the easiest way to mince garlic is to first slice it, then gather all the slices up in a pile and run my knife over them in an up-and-down motion with my right hand, while I use my left palm to hold the tip of the knife in place.

I then gathered all of my tomatoes, removed the stem of each of my globe tomatoes and sliced them in half...

I left the cherry tomatoes intact. 

Once my tomatoes were prepped, I placed all my tomatoes in a sauce pan with about 1/4 inch of water in it (I started with the amount the original recipe called for, but reduced the amount to about 1/4 inches after deciding that the suggested amount looked like too much). I first placed the globe tomatoes in (cut part face up) and then scattered the smaller cherry tomatoes in the available crevices...

I then turned the heat up to medium/medium-high and allowed the water to boil and evaporate. This process took about 10 minutes and allowed the tomatoes to soften up enough so that the skin just fell right off with a little tug of my fingers. While the tomatoes were still boiling,  I prepared my bell peppers for roasting...

 Greased my cookie sheet...

Sliced and seasoned my bell peppers. 

The bell peppers were my own addition and not part of the original recipe. I'm a big fan of roasted bell peppers, especially when they're all spiced up (spices: salt, pepper, turmeric, and paprika) and have oil drizzled on them, like above. I used a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and then added some vegetable oil (I was concerned about the smoke point of EVOO given that the peppers would be set directly under the broiler. I highly recommend that you do some online research about different oils and their smoking points if you cook...really interesting stuff).  

So once the bell peppers were in the oven (broil at 500 degrees for about 10 minutes, checking frequently to make sure they aren't burning), I turned my attention to the tomatoes again...

Once I had them peeled, I placed them in my Magic Bullet (love that thing...big thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law)...

...chopped up my cilantro (I used about one cup) and jalapeno and serrano peppers (I used a lot...maybe about 2.5 jalapenos and about 2.5 serranos... because I like my salsa spicy. However, I didn't dump it all in at once. Instead, I built up the spice level slowly by adding the chopped peppers little by little and tasting in between each addition), and threw those in the blender too.

I blended the tomatoes, cilantro, and spicy peppers for about 15 seconds, until everything was evenly sliced and combined, but not yet liquefied. 

By this point, our whole house was smelling amazingly delicious.

I then heated my chopped onion and minced garlic together in a saucepan over medium heat (with about a table spoon of vegetable oil) for no more than 15 seconds. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of this step...)

Next, I poured the contents of the blender onto the onions and garlic in the saucepan and turned the heat to low/medium-low and allowed the mixture to simmer slowly.  

It was only at this point that I realized that my tomato to onions/garlic ratio seemed off...so I sliced and threw in two more globe tomatoes. As soon as they softened up a bit (a few minutes), I pulled them out of the mix and threw them in the blender. I then also added a piece of roasted red bell pepper, roasted green bell pepper, roasted orange bell pepper, and another 1/2 serrano pepper to the blender. I blended the contents for about 5 seconds, with the hopes that this round of blended tomatoes would be a bit thicker and less liquefied then the first. 

I then added the roasted bell pepper/additional tomatoes/additional serrano peppers blend to the simmering mix in the saucepan and let it continue to simmer. At this point, I added some salt, black pepper, and cumin. I built up the amount of spices the same way I had done with the spicy peppers, again tasting between each additional pinch. 

About 15 total minutes of simmering (and occasional stirring) later, I had my salsa. I let it sit for a little to cool and then packed most of it up in preparation for its big day tomorrow...

...the little bit that was left over was devoured by Dr. Love, our friend "Nimers" who was over, and me. Friends, simply put, my salsa is the bomb diggity...plus some.  I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I'm feeling pretty confident that this salsa story is going to end in a victory!!! I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, Happy Friday and have a great Cinco de Mayo!


UPDATE:  Dr. Love: "They couldn't handle the heat. A non-spicy won. You won in my heart (and in my taste-buds opinion)!" I may not have won the salsa contest (this time), but I definitely won the husband contest ;)