Today marks the start of week three at RooftopKitchen.com. In celebration we are going to introduce the Cooking column, a place for recipes and articles for cooking environmentally and economically healthy cooking. In our first article in cooking we will make a salsa from scratch, in three easy steps. A perfect condiment for all of those wonderful vegetables we will be growing.

Salsa (Spanish for “sauce”) is not always the chunky mixture of raw vegetables and chilies ladled over Mexican food or eaten with chips. Though their wonderfully intense fresh flavors are great for these purposes the generally cold mixture of herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables can be used as sauces for meat, poultry, fish and shellfish. The great thing about salsas, other than there taste, is that they are a low fat a low calorie food, and are incredibly easy to prepare. Make your own in three easy steps:

Step 1: Cut and Chop Ingredients

Out first step in making a salsa, like all recipes, is to gather all our ingredients and prepare them appropriately. For vegetables make sure they are washed and peeled, then get started and go ahead on your dicing. For a salsa a small dice is an appropriate size (a cube with dimensions of 1/4″ x 1/4″ x 1/4″). This we make you salsa easy to eat.

Step 2: Precook

If you are using items that need to be cooked off in your salsa, make sure you cook them throughly and then cool them down. Chilling them will prevent cooking of items in your salsa that are not meant to be heated up, giving you a perfect balance.

Step 3: Combine

Toss all ingredients together and refrigerate the mixture. Keep cold for at least 30 minutes. This will allow all the flavors to combine, producing a wonderful salsa to enjoy.

Pico de Gallo

Now once that we have the basic understanding of how to prepare a salsa let us celebrate Cinco de Mayo and prepare a great traditional condiment from Mexico, the Pico de Galo or salsa mexicana.

This Pico de Gallo recipe will make 1 quart (1lt):

1. Following the steps above we are going to cut and prepare are ingredients. You will want to concasse the tomatoes and remove the seeds of the vegetables before dicing.
2. Step 2 calls for cooking off any thing that needs to be, in this case nothing needs to be cooked.
3. Combine all ingredients and gently toss. Add seasonings and adjust to taste. Then refrigerate.

Once the flavors are finished combining, savor it and celebrate the Mexican heritage.

More salsa recipes:

• Guacamole

Enjoy,

Jimi

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