Fred's Famous Fresh Salsa

The key to this recipe is the fresh ingredients - you can vary the recipe to your own liking. Experiment and make it your own.







Ingredients

10 Chili Peppers (Anaheim, Sweet Italian, Banana,  Pasilla) - Roasted & peeled
1 Medium Onion - minced
4 Medium to Large Meaty Tomatoes (Beefsteak, Plum, Shady Lady, Better Boy) - diced
1 Bunch Cilantro - chopped
Coarse Salt, Cracked Pepper, Minced Garlic or Garlic Powder to taste

The peppers are the most time consuming aspect of this recipe - they can be prepared ahead of time and refrigerated.
The chili peppers have a very thin, very tough skin on them that should be removed. Some sort of flame makes it easy - BBQ, Gas Broiler, Gas Stove, Blow torch. The chilis can be roasted in an oven but it's not as effective. Place the chilis over direct flame and rotate them until the skin becomes charred and blistered as much as possible. Remove the peppers from the flame into a plastic or paper bag, close the bag and let them sweat, steam until they're cool enough to handle. The skin should now be easy to remove by hand.

With a sharp pairing knife, cut off the top of the pepper, slice it open from the opening to the tip and lay it open. Scrape out the seeds. If you are storing the peppers for later use, simply storing them in a bowl will result in a bowl of slimy peppers. I place a saucer upside down in the center of a medium or large plate. Stack the peppers on top of the saucer and wrap in saran, and store in the refrigerator. The slime will drain it's way to the under plate, away from the peppers.

I like this style of salsa rather dry and chunky. So I dice the Tomatoes, Onions, and peppers on the bigger side. Chop the Cilantro well, you can pull the leaves off and chop them, but you can also getaway with bundling it up tightly and cutting 1/8" slices off the bundle. Avoid chunks of stems in your salsa.

When dicing the tomatoes, I put the cutting board on a slant and let the juice run into the sink. I only use the meat of the tomato, discarding the seeds and juicy portion surrounding them.

So mix all the ingredients together, add salt, pepper (preferably fresh cracked), minced garlic or garlic granules or powder to taste. The salt will draw even more moisture from the produce - I like to drain the salsa when juice starts to accumulate. You don't have to throw the juice away - it's great in Bloody Mary's - I hear it cures hangovers
Serve with tortilla chips, over dishes like grilled Salmon etc.

For Taste Sake
Fresh minced garlic might be too much for some people - the Minced Garlic in a jar is less potent.
Experiment with different types of onions, Yellow, White, Brown, Red, Sweet Walla Walla, Maui, Torpedo) Torpedos are my favorite they can be spicy.
A great addition to this salsa is corn - either freshly cut from the cob or roasted first.
Fire roasted Tomatoes (like you did with the peppers) makes a great variation.

This salsa is at it's very best when made fresh but tomatoes and chili peppers aren't always available - you can experiment with canned chopped tomatoes (some are available with Italian or Mexican spices) and canned chopped chili peppers.

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