Love to take a mortgage out to pay for some fugly (albeit delicious) tomatoes
It’s been a couple of busy weeks — I have to keep reminding myself it’s Actually Summer, and to try to enjoy it, so enjoy it we have. We were at Glastonbury, and we’ve had weeks where neither of us have really cooked together because one is out when the other is in. I’m also working my notice at my job, as I prepare to go freelance again in July. It’s a chance, among other things, for Scraps to feel less like a neglected stepchild and more like the heir apparent I know it can be. One thing that might (?) mean is that Scraps will come out on a more reliable basis; a Monday afternoon, say, or a Friday morning. I’ve always justified sending Scraps out at wildly different times every week as some kind of genius social media strategy, trying to catch idle eyes in their most unsuspecting moments. Let’s stick with that for now.
During my absence I’ve actually worked on some really brilliant recipes in the flat. Stuff I’m really excited to share with you. Last issue’s spiced potato skins feel like they really hit a note with people — thanks to everyone who got in touch with their own variations (and thanks to reader Kit for going one further and trying them with sweet potato — a little more experimenting to do on that front by the sounds of it).
This week is an issue dedicated to salsa, because this is a period in the year where simply scooping tortillas into a giant bowl of diced tomatoes actually constitutes a meal. I mean, it’s basically a chopped salad. Isn’t it. ?
The salsa equation (or, my 5 step programme)
Roasted strawberry salsa.
Not going to claim credit for this in terms of inception but a few years ago, when I had a Bon Appetit print subscription, they did a whole issue on tacos. At the time, I was a wound-licking ex-magazine editor spending my redundancy period buying all my favourite magazines I could. I took out subscriptions to Bon Appetit, New York (who I would go on to work for by the end of the year), US GQ (because it was so expensive to buy out in the wild), the New York Times, and the New Yorker. I cancelled BA eventually after they kept losing the issues in the post (the Thanksgiving issue arriving during a heat wave really didn’t hit the spot) but I kept about 10 of the best issues. These were issues that, even from a purely print magazine perspective, were beautiful things — clever feature packages filled with sidebars, box-outs, gorgeous illustrations. Service journalism is now synonymous with e-commerce, and money, but print magazines have always been about service. Bon Appetit’s taco package is one of the best things I’ve read in years and I always come back to it, time and time again.
Particularly the salsa explainer, which is a one-pager about how to make great salsa. Now, I try not to share paywalled stuff here on the newsletter but I am feeling like the Conde Nast overloads won’t come after me if I share a page from an issue that has been out of circulation for three years (Anna Wintour, if you’re reading this, do not interpret this as an admission of guilt).
Mango salsa with smoky chipotle chilli.
Pick your fruit or veg (3 cups). Most salsas will use tomatoes or, if you can find them, tomatillos (a greener cousin, used in salsa verde). You can use any fruit, though. We go for pineapple and mango quite often, and have also done strawberries — which sounds so counter-intuitive but they have such a rich sweetness. Strawberry salsa is incredible. Stone fruit (peaches, plums) are also recommended, though I haven’t tried yet, while melon and cucumber would also work.
Choose your heat (add one of the following). This is probably the area I like experimenting with the most. Jalapeno might sound standard, but Chipotle, Serrano, and Habanero would all work. Sometimes I find the really exciting dried chillis hard to find in the supermarket but Sous Chef and Borough Market’s Spice Mountain are great resources (I actually bought Rob a huge box of chillis for his birthday, including tangy Guajillo and the almost liquorice-y Mulatos.) You can add them dried or hydrate them and blend. Dried chilli flakes, or aleppo pepper flakes would also work in a pinch. What I try and do now is try and match the flavour notes; birds eye chillis have a sharp, peppery heat that I like with sweet flavours (mango, strawberry). Chipotles are smoky but have a browner hue, so I like them with tomatoes as they provide a rich red colour.
Throw in some herbs. Any non-woody herbs here, so coriander, parsley, mint, but also tarragon and basil are surprisingly good. Choose one, or a mix. Tomatoes and basil might skew a little ‘Mama-mia’ but parsley brings a nice freshness to tomatoes, while mango and mint is a nice combination. I prefer adding the herbs in at the end, as some (coriander, parsley) can get a little slimy if they’re aggressively blitzed.
The non-negotiables. One chopped onion. One chopped garlic clove. A tablespoon of lime juice. A teaspoon of salt. Within this, play around a bit; smoked garlic might be interesting. Red onion or shallot instead of white onion. Grapefruit juice, or lemon. Some Mexican recipes also use peanuts or cashews, roughly chopped, and sesame seeds are really nice for some crunchy texture.
Assemble. Depending on your time frame, you can chuck it all in a blender and puree it, or nicely chop it into even chunks (like a pico de gallo). My favourite thing to do is arrange everything on a baking sheet and char everything under the grill (especially if I’m using smoky chipotles) before blending. The strawberry salsa above, for example, looked like this before going under:
Our favourite so far is probably pineapple because it has a nice texture (mango and strawberry go very pureed due to their structure) and the tart pineapple can be tempered with lime juice and chocolatey chillis. Also a tomato-strawberry blend, with classic red chillis and coriander. Below is a simple tomato salsa that I chopped, rather than blended, with some cherry tomatoes.
Next on my list is melon — I love the idea of small cubes of crisp green melon with cubes cucumber, red onion, and lots of shredded mint, with a robust habanero chilli to bring the cool flavours to life. We actually have a ton of watermelon in, but I think it’s almost too wet to work in a salsa (it’s also forming the backbone of a Scraps special, so watch this space).
If you throw any wild salsas together, DM me and let me know how it goes. Until next time!
C