Salsa Shark

Ahh, summer. In addition to my CSA basket arriving every Friday, I love going to the St Paul Farmers' Market and loading up on veggies. Steve is really pumped about veggies, too. I am not sure he knows it yet. This week I bought a, how do you say, salsa kit? It was a cute little basket full of everything you need to make fresh salsa: tomatillos, jalapenos, onions, a green pepper and a tomato. All for 5 bucks!

I bought another little bunch of regular tomatoes because I like them in salsa. I had a few baby ones from the CSA, so I threw those in too. I did a little research on how I should be making fresh salsa and most recipes involved things like roasting, stewing, or other varieties of standing over a fiery stove, so I decided to make up my own recipe. Basically I wanted to use the food processor and the internet was not giving me the recipe I wanted.

Here's how it went down:
1. Quarter 5-6 tomatoes and pulse in the food processor a few times until the chunks are the size that you want them. Pour this stuff in a bowl and set aside. Think about how juicy you want your salsa because you will probably have to dispose of some of the tomato juice.

2. Chop the onions (probably 1 big one or 2 mediums) by hand and set aside.

3. Cut off the stems of the 1 green pepper and 2 jalapeno peppers. Clean the seeds and ribs out of the green pepper. I kept the seeds and ribs of the jalapenos for extra heat, which I anticipate will get stronger the longer the salsa sits. Yes.
Pulse those bad boys in the food processor to the size of your liking, paying particular attention to the size of the jalapenos. I ended up realizing that my jalapenos were still big enough to burn a hole in your face and then had to kind of pulverize more of the chunks than I had originally intended.
Dump peppers in bowl with onions.

4. Clean and quarter tomatillos. Again, pulse in food processor to chunk size of your liking. Mix in with peppers and onions.

5. Toss a handful of cilantro in processor with 2 garlic cloves. This one you can process to a paste. Add to peppers, onions, and tomatillos.

6. Revisit those tomatoes. Dispose of any unwanted juice (probably most of it--you will be adding salt, which will pull out more juices). Mix it all together, salt and pepper to taste.

Hooray! You made salsa! It is a good thing this makes a big batch, because I could eat this stuff for like, 2 hours straight.