Friday, October 29, 2010

Tomato/Basil Salsa

I know its been awhile since I last posted, but the good news is I was able to secure a job and get back in the working world. Thank God, because I realized that my talent or lack of talent to be a food blogger was not going to pay the bills. Also, I was involved with my yearly training and fund raising for the local City to Shore Bike Ride to benefit MS this past September.

During the time of my non-posting, I still followed other food bloggers in Foodbuzz's Project Food Blog Contest. Note the main advertisement under Max's picture and WOW, the passion, dedication, and talent of what these foodies express and put into their blogs as well as expert photography had me floored. I never knew this world that I entered existed to this extreme.

So, I continued to read food blogs in hopes that I would pick up a few things concerning posting, photography, blog site design and the goal of finding my own voice. As you can see, I have added some more side pictures and other propaganda to the blog site. Now, hopefully my food presentation and writing skills will improve to that of my peers, so here goes...

This past summer my trophy wife "Mrs. Cooking with the Dog" and I, established a goal of having a garden with enough plum tomato plants to have tomato sauce for the entire winter months. A third party expert in gardening stated we would need 20 plum tomato plants (my wife always listens to a third parties advice instead of mine.)

We succeeded in growing tomatoes in which we simmered down and blended weekly to yield about 10 gallons of tomato puree. As of the end of October, having fresh tomato sauce on Sundays and through the great generosity of my wife giving sauce away, we are down to about 1 gallon. I guess next year we need to have a bigger garden with more tomato plants.

Even with the abundance of tomatoes for sauce, I was still able to make this simple appetizer. (I bet you thought I was going to talk about my tomato sauce, not this post.)


Being a big fan of chunky salsa and even a bigger fan of fresh tomatoes, during the Summer, I had made this tomato salsa for my family and friends and also serve it as a compliment to seafood entrees. The basic recipe is to dice up 8 plum tomatoes in 1/4" chunks, a 8 leaves of chopped fresh basil, about 2 tablespoons of onion (red or yellow), 2 or 3 chopped garlic cloves, one hot pepper of your choice, salt and pepper to taste. I also have used hot salt and jalapeno sliced olives that I found. Then let sit in the refrigerator to let the flavors blend together. With fresh ingredients, you really can't go wrong with the portioning. Feel free to make this you own by simply adding other of your favorite ingredients.


Okay, the basic recipe I stated of just tomato, basil, garlic, and salt is what you use as part of the bruschetta, and coupled with my previous pesto post. Now the only thing that would be missing is the olive tapenade and eggplant salsa which I will discuss in a future posts so I can complete the my version bruschetta. However the "jacked up" version of Tomato/Basil can be served with with a seafood entree or with chips as an appetizer or snack. People like the freshness and lack of tomatoey liquid that store bought salsas have. Trust me on this, that it will go before any other type of salsas that you may put out.

During this preparation, Max happened to get o hold of a hot pepper and immediately spit it out, then was back out to the yard to chew on grass.

1 comment:

  1. Oh I love fresh salsa, and yours looks really good, just want to dig in a chip. I wonder what I have in the fridge and pantry, now I want some salsa. :)

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