FIRED ROASTED TOMATO CHIPOTLE SALSA

Years ago Helen Highwater of The Strolling Scones gave me this recipe, and since we loved the Easy Salsa recipe and it is in fact so very easy and fast to make I never really tried to make this.  After all, what could a slender, gorgeous musician know about cooking?!  So when she and Rick came this last November to play at Greune Hall she brought me a jar of this salsa that she had canned herself last summer.  OMG!!  We almost drank it we loved it so much.  Since tomato season was over I tried to make it with fire roasted canned tomatoes – no good – I tried it several times experimenting with the amounts but honestly it wasn’t that great.  So now that good tomatoes are abundant I made it again today.  Bingo!  It is definitely more of a process than the Easy Salsa, which is still good and probably most of you reading this make it yourself, but if you like a smokey salsa at all, this is one you should at least try once.  With the carmelized onions, blackened tomatoes, red wine vinegar and chipotle chiles it is steeped in flavor.  What I will say though is that I wish I had doubled the recipe.  For all the time it took it didn’t make much – in fact other than Justin I may not share this batch with anyone else – it is so addictive that it would kill me to see someone sit and eat it all at one sitting, which is what anyone who tries it would want to do.  I guess I will have to buy a bushel of tomatoes, like we did in the old days, and spend a day canning some myself, so that I’m not so selfish with it.  Believe me, it’s worth the extra effort.

1/6 c. plus 1 TB EV olive oil

2 lbs. Roma tomatoes, blackened*
½ onion, peeled and chopped
4 t. finely minced roasted garlic
½ c. minced fresh cilantro leaves
4 chipotle chiles en adobo, chopped**
1/6 c. red wine vinegar***
½-3/4 TB salt
Scant t. sugar

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a sauté pan over medium heat until lightly smoking.  Add the onion and sauté until carmelized, about 10 min.  Transfer the onion, half the blackened tomatoes, and garlic to a food processor or blender and pulse until finely chopped, but not pureed.  Add the cilantro and chipotle chiles, and pulse again to mix.

Peel, seed and chop the remaining pound of tomatoes and fold everything together with the remaining 1/6 c. olive oil, vinegar, salt and sugar.  Keep refrigerated.

*I used good summer tomatoes from a Farmer’s Market instead of Romas.  To blacken them, slice them in half horizontally, and put the cut side down on a cookie sheet lined with foil.  Put them in a preheated oven set on Broil on the rack about 4-6” from the heating element.  Broil them until the skins start to turn black, and then turn them over.  All in all it took about 15 minutes – I didn’t wait for the cut side to turn black because I felt like they were getting mushy as it was.  Set them out and when they are cool enough peel the skin off and cut out the core.

**These are canned and on the Mexican aisle of the grocery store.

*** I did end up doubling it when I made more so I changed up the recipe a bit and cut down on the original amount of 1/4 c. oil and vinegar, and I used 1/3 c. of each for a double recipe.  So if you do only make this recipe without doubling it, then just use a 1/3 c. measuring cup and fill it halfway to get 1/6 c. of oil and vinegar.