Fresh tomato salsa recipe. How to turn your party leftovers into treats
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Leftovers, Vegetables and Sides, Vegetarian | 5 comments
fresh tomato salsa made from leftover sliced tomatoes from the day before!
This is my second recipe in the series of how to turn your party leftovers into something delicious that you’d actually like to eat. This is a fun challenge and everything has been great so far.
I was faced with a small bowl of sliced tomatoes left over from the party. There were loads of whole tomatoes too but they can easily be incorporated into other dishes or even frozen in bags – no need to blanch – to pop into stews during the winter when no home grown toms are available. Normally a bowl of sliced tomatoes that could be turned into soup or something else would probably be tossed away. But not this time!
Although it can be quite chilly here in the evenings, sunny days mean eating by the pond. What could be more welcome with the first tipple of the evening a fresh tomato salsa scooped up on Tortilla chips or even thinly sliced toast rubbed with smoked garlic. I’ve not made tomato salsa before so I thought that I’d give it a go.
I’ve always wondered why people always remove the seeds and skin from tomatoes when making salsa. I like the skin and seeds and it almost hurts to see them thrown away. Unless of course you are going to save the seeds to sow next year see here for the simplest and easiest method in the world for saving tomato seeds. Well I got my answer on Sunday when I whizzed up a bowl of sliced tomatoes into a salsa – The mixture gets very wet! But if you want to use leftover tomato slices all you need to do is drain the salsa in a sieve over a bowl for an hour or so. Simple. I didn’t do this when I tried this recipe – you can see the liquid at the sides of the bowl but it didn’t dent our enjoyment.
And actually we preferred the texture of the salsa made with skins and seeds.
If you are lucky and have a food processor – fresh tomato salsa can be whizzed up in minutes (including preparation). If you are not so lucky, reach for your sharpest knife and chop, chop, chop.
Ideally a salsa should stand for at least half an hour to let the flavours merge but ours tasted terrific straight from the Magimix. For smart company, I’d let it drain through a sieve for an hour or so before serving and toss the drained tomatoey liquid into soup or a risotto.
| Fresh tomato salsa recipe. How to turn your party leftovers into treats |
- 1 small red onion – sliced
- 4 – 5 sliced tomatoes
- Half a small Jalapeño pepper – If fresh remove the seeds. I used some pickled ones from a jar and used 6 slices including seeds – Discovery Red Jalapenos available from Tesco. Incidentally these keep very well in the fridge.
- 1-2 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice to taste. Fresh lime juice is more traditional but lemon juice worked fine.
- 1 handful of fresh oregano leaves – I found that some had self seeded by our pond. A handful of fresh coriander/cilantro leaves would be just as good and perhaps better. The other herb that I’d use with this would be marjoram. These three herbs have enough depth of flavour to make this recipe work well.
- Food processor method:
- Throw your fresh herbs and red Jalapeño pepper into the largest bowl and pulse until they are chopped fine.
- Add the sliced onions, tomatoes, lemon juice and pulse until the mix is slightly chunky.
- Drain and serve with dippers – thinly sliced French bread, tortilla chips etc.
- Hand cut method:
- Just chop all ingredients very fine, add the lemon juice and stir well. Drain and serve with dippers – thinly sliced French bread, tortilla chips etc. Be imaginative and any suggestions from you will always be welcome.
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I’m a big salsa fan and think it’s one of the best treats of summer and so versatile. This is a nice basic recipe. A little salt brings out the tomato flavour and fresh garlic gives some bite. Salsas are also great on fish, chicken and pork. Try also with fesh basil and mint together, lemon juice, toms and garlic. The possibilities ar endless! I very much enjoy your blog. Very helpful for a fellow smallholder.
I love left overs. It’s fun trying to come up with creative ways to make delicious meals out of left overs and sometimes these left over meals turn out to be surprisingly more delicious than the original meal. Your salsa looks refreshingly scrummy.
Yum your salsa recipe sounds nice. I make my own salsa in bulk and freeze portions of it so that I always have some on hand when needed.
See where please?
“Unless of course you are going to save the seeds to sow next year see here for the simplest and easiest method in the world for saving tomato seeds.”
Hi Jo
Ooops! I’ve put the link in now 🙂