Tomato Salsa

This recipe is pretty close to the green salsa, except it uses tomatoes instead of tomatillos. Ideally, the ingredients would be chopped instead of pureed. But I'm pretty lazy. We did get this amazing salsa machine that would cut the ingredients easily. But it has disappeared and so (except for days when I'm feeling very ambitious, which isn't often) the blender it is.

Ingredients

2 cups Tomatoes

2 cloves garlic

1/2 onion

1/4 cup jalapenos

Salt

Lime juice

1/2 green pepper (optional)

1/4 bunch cilantro (coriander)

We had a variety of tomatoes waiting to be used.

Blend ingredients and adjust salt and lime juice to taste.

Pour is a serving container and refrigerate. After a few hours (if you've used a blender) the salsa calms down, goes darker and looks less "frothy".

Salsa Verde (Green Salsa) and Creamy Tomatillo Salad Dressing

Niall bought a big bunch of cilantro (coriander), so while a certain someone who hates cilantro isn't checking the internet so much, I thought I'd post a few recipes to use it up.

Ingredients

1 can of tomatillos*

3 cloves garlic

1/2 onion

1/4 cup jalapenos

1 Tablespoon lime juice

1/4 bunch fresh cilantro (coriander)

salt and pepper to taste

Place all ingredients in the blender and blend until smooth.

If you'd like to make a creamy salad dressing, add ranch dressing to the salsa verde. In a pinch, I suppose bottled ranch would do. (I have some issues with bottled ranch that are probably better left alone.) We have a supply of powdered ranch dressing.

I add 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup mayo, 1 1/2 Tablespoons of the ranch dressing to 1/2-3/4 cup of the salsa verde and blend.

The end result looks something like this:

It makes a good topping for a salad. Since I come from a land where ranch dressing is used as a common condiment, I also think it's normal to use the dressing for all sorts of other things. (Bread dip, topping for burritos, baked potato topping, pancake topping...I'll stop.)

*Tomatillos are kind of like little green tomatoes, except they're actually gooseberries (or so I've been told). Fresh tomatillos come in a husk. I've had a hard time finding fresh ones in the UK, but can occasionally get them at Borough Market in London. I tried growing tomatillos and failed (the pots were too shallow). Maybe I'll try again this summer.