I spent almost three years of my life living in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  While living there my absolute favorite food was pupusas.  They’re not hard to love, considering they are pretty much like the corn tortilla version of pizza (which I am rather obsessed with).

It’s a simple idea, you take a ball of masa dough, make a hole in the center and stick in a lump of cheese, or meat, or veggies, or a mixture of those, pat it flat, fry it up with a decent amount of grease, and serve it with a variety of spicy cabbage slaws and krauts.

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but the main type of kraut used on top of pupusas is called curtido, which is pretty much just a broad term for pickle.

I have played around with various non-fermented versions of curtido over the years but it wasn’t until I won a copy of Fermented Vegetables by Kirsten and Christopher Shockey (available also in Canada) that it finally hit me what was missing from my version—mine wasn’t fermented!

The recipe is very simple, just cabbage, carrots, onion, garlic, and chile pepper flakes, and oregano and cumin.  You can take the curtido in different directions by tweaking the ratios, making it hotter or milder, more herbs or less, more of one vegetable or less, and so on.  I was running out of carrots the day I made mine so I think I’ll use more next time, partly because it will add more color to the final product.

The recipe is adapted from Fermented Vegetables, and if your library doesn’t have this book I highly recommend getting yourself a copy (or asking them to get it!).  I’m so happy to have won a copy because I love the book and have read through pretty much the whole thing!  Now I see before me a summer full of fermenting….

It will be a week or two before it’s fully fermented, but making it now will help connect you to the spirit of Cinco de Mayo, which is ¡perfecto!  Once it is ready make your favorite tacos, burritos, or even try making pupusas, and then be sure to put tons of curtido on top.

Fresh salsa is always the preferred option, assuming it’s made with delicious local ingredients.  Based on that restriction fresh salsa is generally limited to a span of about 3-4 months, with true pico de gallo salsa only happening for a couple of months.

So I’m okay with eating my canned salsa.  My whole family enjoys it and when we open a jar it typically gets eaten in one sitting.

Recently we found a game changer.

Apples.

Ontario’s apple growers are very adept at preserving their apples into the winter months allowing us consumers the opportunity to eat a delicious local fruit throughout these lean months.

Ontario farmers are always quite good at coaxing plants to grow in greenhouses and hothouses throughout these cold and sun-starved months.  The most recent discovery of ours was cilantro.

One day for lunch a couple weeks ago I decided to make a salsa with the apples and cilantro we had got at the Kitchener Market a few days before.  I through in a couple frozen jalapeños that we grew, some local red onion, a dash of lime juice (not local…) and dash of apple cider vinegar.  I think I could have left out the lime juice to stay pure to my local ideals but I wanted to have at least one classic flavor on board.

The result is an amazing, crunchy, flavorful salsa that really makes it easy to imagine the summer that is still a long ways off.  And thanks to the lime juice and vinegar the apples stay nice a fresh so this salsa can be saved in the fridge for several days without losing quality.

Now, I have to admit this is not the first time I put apples in a salsa – see The Pleaple have Spoken.  But it is the first time I’ve realized we could eat a fresh Pico de Gallo style salsa in the cruel cold heart of winter.  So, our lives have been changed, and for the better.

This post was originally written for Bailey’s Local Foods, which is where you can find the recipe.  However, a recipe is not super necessary for this salsa as you can simply experiment and find a ratio of ingredients that works for you!

(This post has been updated a few times since 2014, including the past two summers with info about prices found at St. Jacob’s Market in Ontario).

Our final batch of salsa that we canned for the year, Chunky Peach Salsa, was definitely our best.  And maybe that is because after canning 3 other batches we learned a couple things.

One thing we learned was not to cook the peaches very long or they got lost amongst the tomatoes.  Basically we now just add the peaches to the salsa right before we’re ready to start canning.

Second was that if you don’t want to add tomato paste to thicken the salsa then you’ll have to cook it for a long time.  This could mean simmering the salsa for 1-2 hours….

So our final canning session for salsa leaves us with a total of 56 pints of 4 different kinds of salsa (including the homegrown salsa I wrote about earlier this week).  And while 56 pints may seem like a lot it’s essentially 1 pint a week for the next year with 4 extra for sharing or larger eating events.  Yes, we eat a lot of salsa.  Well, my family eats a good amount of it, but without me around they’d likely only need about 20 pints for the year.

Here is the recipe and it is loosely based on our friend’s (non-peach) salsa which we refer to around here as “Mr. Dan’s.”  When we made this the other day we did a double batch which produced 18 pints.  A single batch will likely produce 9-11 pints, but results will vary based on the variety of tomatoes used and how long they are cooked down.

Update, 2017

Here’s what I got at St. Jacob’s Market here north of Waterloo in late August, to make a quadruple batch:

• 1/2 bushel Roma tomatoes($11)
• 1/2 bushel San Marzano Tomatoes ($12 or $15 depending on vendor)
• 1/2 bushel sweet banana peppers ($12)
• 1/2 bushel Red Haven peaches ($15 for the smaller uglier ones)

And 2018:

• 1 bushel Roma tomatoes for $15
• 1/2 bushel long red sweet peppers $15
• 1/2 bushel Red Haven peaches $20

And what I generally have from our garden, CSA or elsewhere:

• 1 large bunch cilantro
• 5 lbs onions
• 3-4 heads garlic
• 1 litre/quart cider vinegar (we actually make our own… which it seems surprising I don’t have a post about!)

For one thing we have a huge bag of tomatoes on the floor, another full of peppers, and peaches are covering our hutch.  Luckily eventually I find the right attitude and energy and I get back to feeling good about all this cooking and preserving.   Plus everyone here works really hard:

Yesterday my young assistant and I tackled the homegrown tomatoes by turning them into an entirely homegrown salsa.  Well, it was entirely homegrown until we realized that it was way too runny because we had thrown several Brandywine tomatoes into the mix.  Thus there was an addition to the recipe of a small can of tomato paste.

Ahhh well, we can’t always be purists and that’s probably okay.  Luckily there is no rule book when it comes to eating local, just a desire to eat as close to home whenever possible.

Although this salsa is for canning we’ve also been enjoying lots of fresh salsas with whatever ingredients we have on hand.  The most obvious thing of course is the peaches, but we’ve found that most fruits work well in salsa as do many unconventional vegetables.

Cucumbers, as pictured above, are an amazing addition to a fresh salsa.  They bring a light fresh flavor of their own but also soak up all the flavors of the foods around them while adding a nice crunch and color to the final product.

Radishes are great too, for the combination of spicy flavor, color, and crunch.  Recently we added kohlrabi to a salsa, which was great too!  It turns out that as long as you meet a few requirements pretty much any fruit or vegetable can go in a salsa.  Here are our guidelines for creating unique original salsas:

1. Some crunchy things, like any of the following, nicely diced in small pieces: onions (any colour), sweet peppers, radishes, cucumbers, apples…
2. Some sweet things, also nicely diced: peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, apples, pears, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, strawberries, tomatoes, sweet corn…
3. Some fillers, (diced if necessary): black beans, cucumbers, extra tomatoes, fruit…
4. For some spice and zing: hot peppers (diced, or dry crushed red peppers if you don’t have anything fresh), cilantro, lime juice (or local options would be cider vinegar or verjus if you can find it), garlic, a dash of cumin, and salt and pepper.

I recently shared 5 salsa recipes on the Bailey’s Local Foods blog so check those out for more inspiration.  Today’s recipe is for an (almost) all homegrown salsa for canning.  You’ll need a pressure canner for this recipe because there is not enough added acid (vinegar or lemon/lime juice) to make it fully safe for water bath canning.  If you added a whole cup of vinegar it would likely be safe for water bath canning, but we didn’t want that much vinegar flavor in this recipe.

This recipe yields 7-9 pints, depending on how much you cook it down.

In order for these peppers to be useful later we needed to preserve them quickly and in such a way that they would be easily accessible.  The key to doing this seems to be having an efficient method of chopping them and then flash freezing them on a cookie sheet so that they don’t freeze into one huge group.  Then you can just grab a handful and toss them in whatever your cooking!

To chop a sweet bell pepper quickly, begin by cutting off the top and bottom.   Make a slit down the side of the pepper.  Remove the core and flatten the pepper.  Slice it in long strips and then cut perpendicularly.  Freeze the diced peppers on a cookie sheet and transfer to freezer bags once frozen.

Be sure to exercise caution when chopping endless amounts of peppers (or anything else).  Keep your fingers parallel to the edge of the knife blade so that it’s not possible to slice them in the process!

A second method is to chop them more finely in a food processor and freeze them in ice cube trays before putting them in freezer bags.  This method is good for using them in sauces later.

“No worries,”  I thought, ”I’ll just make dutch babies.”  Alas, no all-purpose flour, and they just aren’t good with 100% whole wheat.

“Okay, so what then?”  Then I saw the jar of grits from Georgia.  Yes, from Georgia, where we lived more than 10 months ago.   And then the idea of polenta floated into my head.

So I decided I could make polenta with those grits.  Polenta is so easy and delicious, and topped with a simple sauce it tastes wonderful.  I decided to make a sofrito, which is like a cooked salsa, and added an egg, sunny-side-up, on top.  Very quickly I had a simple, delicious meal, made without much prep or cooking time.  I had forgotten how much I love the creamy taste of polenta and we all finished off everything in no time, leaving us without leftovers (which was sad because we all wanted more!).

These eggs are from “Silky” hens, from the same farm where we got our apples pressed into juice.  They were definitely free range, seeing as the chickens were wandering about all over the place!  Can you spot the double yolker?

Polenta

• 1 small onion, diced
• 1-2 Tbs. oil or butter
• 4 cups water
• 1 cup polenta (or coarse grits)
• 1/4 grated Parmesan cheese
• (a few spoonfuls of milk)

Heat the oil in a pot over medium heat and add the onion.  Fry for 2-3 minutes then add the water and bring to a boil. Add the polenta and lower the heat to a simmer for 20-30 minutes, until the polenta is soft and the water is all absorbed or evaporated. Add a bit of milk if you like along with the Parmesan and season with salt and pepper.

Sofrito

• 1 small onion, diced
  
• 1-2 cloves garlic
• 1-2 Tbs. oil
• 1-2 sweet peppers, diced
• (1 jalepeño, diced)
• 4-10 tomatoes, diced (the number depends on the size of the tomatoes and how tomato-y you like it)
• dash of ground cumin

Heat the oil in a large pan over medium heat, add the onion and garlic.  Saute for 2-3 minutes then add the peppers and continue cooking for 2-3 minutes more.  Add the tomatoes and cumin, and season with salt and pepper.  Simmer over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes , stirring occasionally until it begins to turn into a thick, chunky sauce.

Fried Egg

• 1-2 eggs per person
• oil
• salt and pepper

Heat oil in a cast iron pan and when hot crack the egg into the pan and sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper.  If it’s a large pan add multiple eggs.  For soft, runny yokes do not break the yoke or flip the egg.  For a slightly runny yoke flip the egg after the egg white has mostly solidified and cook briefly on the other side.

Finished Product

Taking the three parts above start with a base of polenta, spoon on the sofrito, and top with the egg.  Finish your plate quickly to get seconds before everyone else….

Jon asked what was growing right now in the Northwest where his Dad and I live, and if I might want to share about that.  Most things are just beginning to sprout–outside and in–but the first vegetable harbinger of spring is determinedly and gloriously pushing up from the dirt.  ASPARAGUS!!

We are still in the rapturous phase and are eagerly finding our old favorite recipes.  (In another few weeks, we will no doubt be reduced to making and freezing asparagus soup just to use it up.  The soup really is, however, a taste of early spring when you thaw it in late spring or early summer.)  Note: my husband planted a section of purple passion variety two years ago and so we are just getting a few slender stalks as seen in the picture.

Tonight’s recipe came from Simply in Season by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert.  It is basically what we have always called Dutch Babies but with added veggies and cheese.  The recipe can be easily found on the internet (search “Simply in Season Vegetable Oven Pancake), and it’s quite easy!  I made it with steamed asparagus cut in 1 inch pieces, a few sliced mushrooms which were leftover in the crisper, and some cut-up baby peppers.  I sprinkled the top with fresh-from-the-herb-bed chopped thyme and some white cheddar cheese to finish it off.  (You will have surmised that I, unlike the Kitchener, am not abiding by the “local only” dictum.)  We just love eating from our own garden when able.  Next time, however, I’ll add some cut up scallions, more fresh herbs, and use parmesan instead of the heavier white cheddar.

If I get another guest spot, I’ll blog about the other early spring delight–RHUBARB!  What do you say, Kitchener?

Sandra Spee is the Kitchener’s mom, his Young Assistants’ Oma, and a great cook!  She has cooked real food for as long as the Kitchener can remember and always makes use of whatever is growing in the huge garden that she and her husband/Opa have next to their home.  She lives in Olympia, WA and prefers sunny weather.