rainforest recipes

For most of my cooking life, if I have needed tomatoes in any form for a recipe, I would purchase them canned ... canned tomatoes, canned tomato paste, canned tomato juice, canned tomato sauce ... if I bought fresh tomatoes, it was to eat them fresh in a salad or sandwich. Now, I find myself in a land where tomato based recipes are popular, and canned goods are not ... and every cook makes her own special brand of tomato sauce with her eyes closed. To work around my deficiency in tomato-sauce making skills, I have avoided most tomato based recipes for quite some time now ... a not really difficult feat since I'm also not that crazy about tomato based recipes. However, this one caught my eye when I realized that the vegies are oven-roasted. I wanted to try it as a salsa, but it has been weeks since the "specialty" story in Santa Elena has stocked nachos, so I decided to go with pasta instead. The flavor was wonderful, even with the substitution in chiles, although if using fresh jalapeno's again, I would use two instead of one. And here is the recipe:

Roasted Tomato Salsa
Recipe by: Heidi at 101 Cookbooks.com

If you can't find a guajillo pepper, no worries - just leave it out of the recipe. The salsa will still taste delicious with just the roasted tomatoes and chipotles. You can also substitute another type of chile if you like. The reddish-brown guajillo are known for their strong, complex and earthy flavor, and medium heat. Feel free to experiment with more readily available chiles from your area until you find one you really like to play off the flavors of the chipotles and roasted tomatoes.

Two chipotles can be very spicy, consider yourself warned. Start with one, or even one-half a chipotle if you or your family are heat-sensitive, and work up from there.

-= Ingredients =-
2 pounds Roma tomatoes ; cut in half lengthwise
1 medium white onion ; cut into six wedges
1 large garlic clove ; halved (I used 3 small cloves and will use more the next time)
a ; couple pinches of finely ground sea salt
2 -3 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium dried guajillo chile pepper ; soaked in boiling water until softened, and then drained
1 -2 chipotles in adobo sauce ; (canned) (I didn't have any dried chiles or chipotles in adobo sauce, so substituted 1 fresh red pepper and 1 fresh jalapeno pepper)
1/2 cup cilantro ; roughly chopped

-= Instructions =-
Heat oven to 400F degrees.

Now gently tossed the tomatoes, onions, garlic, and salt with the olive oil in a large bowl.
(I also cleaned and chopped the red pepper and the jalapeno pepper, and added them to the other vegies)

After they are nicely coated arrange in a single layer, tomatoes cut-side facing up, across a parchment-lined baking sheet.
(I added a step and an ingredient at this point by sprinking dried oregano over the vegetables.)

Roast in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until the tomatoes start to collapse and the onions begin to caramelize a bit. Remove from the oven. (It actually took more than 30 minutes ... probably 45 to 50 minutes ... to cook the vegetables as much as I wanted, but the oven wasn't high enough for the first 25 minutes)

Puree the chiles (both the guajillo and chipotles) with the roasted garlic and two roasted tomato halves.

(It doesn't say here specifically, and perhaps its not even necessary for those who are used to working with cooked tomatoes, but it is better to take off the skins of the remaining tomatoes before chopping or mashing them.)
Chop the remaining tomatoes by hand (once they've cooled a bit).

Chop and add the onions as well. (I put all of the peppers, onion, garlic and a couple of tomatoes into the blender ... everything except the remaining tomatoes ... and a couple of small pieces of onion that escaped the blender!)

Add chile/tomato mixture to chopped/mashed tomatoes


Season with salt and stir in the cilantro.



And its ready to use as either a sauce or a salsa

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