[PLUG-TALK] John's Early Girl Salsa

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Sat Aug 15 05:20:48 UTC 2009


These days everyone in Portland is driving around with a trunk full of
tomatoes, trying to give them away. Well, no more! If you have an
embarras de richesse tomatoesque, voici la solution!

John's Early Girl Salsa

I call this Early Girl Salsa because Early Girl is the best tomato to
grow in Portland. Mine are currently about two meters high and have
been supplying me with luscious red tomatoes since the 4th of July.
Furthermore, Early Girl is a very high acid tomato, which makes them
ideal for canning and other preserving methods. Nothing harmful to
humans can live in the acid bath produced by the juice of an Early Girl
tomato. And that acid is natural vitamin C, which God and Linux Pauling
want you to eat a lot of. Moreover, the high acid gives Early Girl a
very tomatoey flavor. Oh, and tomatoes are the #1 source of lycopene,
essential for men's sexual health. Yes, you read it here. Eat tomatoes
and get ... well, never mind.

Ingredients:

About 10 kg Early girl tomatoes. Early Girl keeps its beautiful flavor
for weeks, so they don't have to be fresh picked. I make this in the
middle of the winter from frozen Early Girls and it tastes the same.

6 jalapeño peppers. I like it moderately hot, so if you want less heat
remove some of the seeds (the heat is all in the seeds).

1 average white onion

2 limes

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (or equivalent in fresh-pressed juice)

1/2 Tablespoon salt. You can actually leave the salt out completely,
and it still tastes yummy.

Cilantro, 1-3 ounces, depending on your taste. I use a lot. Some people
hate cilantro; if that's you, leave it out. Except that if you leave it
out the salsa will not be authentic, plus your kids will flunk Spanish.
Seriously.


Tools required:

Blender or food processor
Various large pots or bowls
Colander, large sieve or leaky bowl to drain the tomatoes in
Chopper (optional)

Start by skinning the tomatoes. This is very easy, but takes a few
minutes. Take a pot large enough to hold all the tomatoes and fill it
2/3 with water. Put on the stove and bring to a boil. While waiting for
the water to boil cut out the stem end of the tomatoes with a pointed
paring knive. When the water is hot turn off the heat and move the pot
to the sink. Dump the tomatoes into the water, cover, and let them sit
for a few minutes. 

While the tomatoes are sitting in the hot water chop the bejabbers out
of the onion and the jalapeños - tiny bits about 25-50 mm. This is
where a food chopper comes in handy. But if you don't have one, just
use a knife. If you want to remove some of the seeds from the
jalapeños, do so before chopping by slicing them lengthwise. Put the
chopped onion and jalapeños into a saucepan and set aside.

Peel the limes with a paring knife and put them whole into the blender.
Just leave them there - we'll come back to them in a minute.

By now the tomatoes are ready to be skinned. Use a large leaky spoon to
lift them out of the boiling water and place into another large pot or
bowl, then discard the water. They are too hot to handle, but use the
spoon to grab a couple whose skins are already off. Put them into the
blender with the limes. Puree the limes and tomatoes, and pour the
liquid into the saucepan containing the chopped onion and jalapeños.
Heat to boiling and then simmer a few minutes until the onions are
transparent. Pour into a pot large enough to hold all the ingredients
and set aside. Go have a beer while waiting for the tomatoes to cool.
(Do not take this part of the instructions lightly; having the beer
will enhance the flavor of the salsa. Trust me on this.)

When the tomatoes are cool enough to handle strip off and discard the
skins. Place the tomatoes into a large sieve or leaky bowl with a pot
underneath to catch the juice. As you place the skinned tomatoes into
the sieve or bowl, cut them through the equator and squeeze out most of
the juice. This will collect in the bottom of the pot and can be saved
for drinking as real natural tomato juice. (Once you taste this you
will never again drink the oversalted crap in a can from the store.)
You need to remove some of the juice because Early Girl is a very juicy
tomato and your sauce will be too runny if you don't. 

After you have all the tomatoes in the sieve or leaky bowl with their
skins removed, place into the blender. This quantity will fill the
blender to 2/3 about three times. Blend each batch at the lowest speed
for just a moment and stop. Push the whole tomatoes that are still on
top down, and repeat. After two or three times you can just leave it
running, but stop just as soon as the vortex appears. You want them
severely chopped, but still with small chunks; not pureed. Add each
blender-full to the large pot containing the chopped onion. jalapeños
and pureed tomato-lime mix.

Chop the cilantro into tiny pieces and add to the large pot. Add the
garlic and salt, and stir to mix everything thoroughly. Let sit for a
few minutes before serving.

Yield: About seven pints. It really makes about eight pints, except
that you ate a pint of it with chips and your second and third beer. 

This salsa can be stored in the refrigerator for at least a couple of
weeks. It may actually last longer, but that's the longest it's ever
lasted in my refrigerator without being eaten. It also freezes
beautifully. And if you really like kitchen adventures, you can can it
in a standard water bath canner, just as you would can whole tomatoes.
The limes add enough acid to counterbalance the lack of acid in the
onion and jalapeños, so the mixture is just as safe as canning any high
acid tomato.

Further thoughts:

Compare the cost and quality of this salsa with the crap you buy in a
jar at the store. I figure this salsa costs me about 50 cents a pint,
has several times the nutritional value, minimal sodium and no
preservatives. 

More importantly to me, it tastes like the stuff I ate in Mexico when
we lived there. This is the way Marta, our maid and cook, would prepare
it. She made a new batch every other morning from fresh ingredients. I
can still hear the liquidora as she blended the tomatoes. It was always
on the table. I ate it on my eggs at breakfast and on the meat at the
comida. And when we lived in Mexico I don't remember ever being sick,
not even having a cold.

And finally, yes, I know what Professor Pauling's real first name is.
It was literally a typo (talk about priming!). But then I decided just
to leave it.



More information about the PLUG-talk mailing list