After getting a nice Cuisinart food processor from my parents for Christmas (thanks!), I quickly headed to the grocery store to buy ingredients to make salsa and hot sauce. The Cuisinart's maiden voyage was through the seas of fresh tomatillos. I found a recipe for "Mexican salsa verde" online, and below you will find pictures and details of its preparation.
I was really sold on this type of salsa verde because the raw ingredients are roasted before any other preparation. So here we go...
Ingredients:
tomatillos
hot peppers
onion
garlic
vegetable broth
cumin
fresh rosemary
fresh thyme
salt
I used about eight medium-sized tomatillos, one medium-sized onion, and lots of garlic. The other quantities are really up to you! Choose any kind of hot pepper that seems interesting. I chose jalapeños because they looked freshest.
Preparation:
Remove the husks from the tomatillos if necessary. Do not peel the onion nor the garlic. Just cut the onion in half. Without using any oil, roast the tomatillos, hot peppers, and unpeeled onion and garlic cloves in a pan (preferably cast iron) until they start to turn golden brown.
Remove these ingredients from the pan and allow them to rest while they cool off. I cut the tomatillos in half so that they would cool faster.
Once cool, slice the tomatillos, hot peppers, onion, and garlic. Chop up some thyme and rosemary and place all the ingredients in your food processor along with the cumin, a good amount of vegetable stock, and plenty of salt. Process the ingredients very well until you obtain a puree.
The last step is to return the puree to the pan and reduce over low heat so that the flavors have time to get to know each other. This will bring out complex flavors that will go great with the bright acidity of the tomatillos.
Final thoughts....
Roasting the onion took away some of its thunder. Next time, I may only roast half the onion and use the other half raw.
The rosemary demonstrated its ability to overpower other more subtle flavors, like thyme. Perhaps one teaspoon of chopped rosemary and one tablespoon of chopped thyme would have been a better balance.
Enojy!
