Food Thursday: two takes on salsa

Salsa is so versatile and so healthy. Serve it with chips or veggies for a snack or an appetizer. Use it to top your tacos or grilled meat. Keep it really chunky and it can even serve as a side dish. It’s surprisingly easy to make your own salsa and the fresh taste of these in-season veggies makes now a perfect time to do so.

It’s true salsa doesn’t have to be made with tomatoes, but I’ve got two different tomato-based versions for you to try.

Salsa with jalapenos
1 large tomato, chopped
2 medium green onions, thinly sliced
1 jalapeno, finely diced
1/2 tsp lime zest
2 TB lime juice (if I don’t have a fresh lime to zest, I’ve just added a splash more lime juice and it comes out fine)

1. Chop it up & mix it in a bowl.

Salsa with cilantro
2-3 tomatoes, chopped & seeded
1/2 cup red onion, diced
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
3 TB lime juice
1 TB extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground red pepper

1. Chop it up & mix it in a bowl.

Both of these taste best if you make them a couple of hours ahead of time and let the ingredients meld together.

Food Tuesday! Spicy Peanut Chicken

I can’t take any credit for this recipe – I got it straight from the pages of Cooking Light. (so go there and you can get a prettier copy to print off) Cooking Light is one of my most favorite magazines and rare is the recipe out of it that doesn’t turn out well. This one is sooooo good that we’ve made it twice in the last month. One of the reasons I like it is that it uses a lot of tomatoes (of which I’m getting a ridiculous amount from the farm co-op) but since the tomatoes cook down – my husband, who doesn’t like tomatoes – doesn’t mind them in the least. As for family ratings, the girls think it’s okay with very little sauce. My 4 year old boy ate 3 helpings last night. It’s yummmmmmy!

Spicy Peanut Chicken over Rice

1 TB peanut oil (I used sesame oil because I had it)
1 cup chopped onion (about 1 medium)
1.5 TB minced garlic
2.5 lbs skinless, boneless chicken breasts cut into 1 inch pieces
1/3 cup chunky peanut butter
1.5 tsp curry powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp crushed red pepper (more if you like it spicier)
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 (6 oz) can of tomato paste
3 cups chopped plum tomato (about 6 tomatoes)
2 (14 oz) cans of fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
2-4 cups of cooked brown rice

Heat oil in a dutch oven over medium high heat. Add onion & garlic to pan; cook 5 minutes or until tender. Add chicken and cook until done – stirring frequently. Stir in peanut butter and next 5 ingredients (thru tomato paste); cook 1 minute. Add tomato and broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes or until slightly thickened, stirring occasionally. Serve over rice.

The recipe notes that you can top this with Greek style yogurt to cut the spiciness a bit. We haven’t done that so I can’t tell you if it’s worth it but we like the spiciness.

Note on the rice. The recipe actually calls for 8 cups of rice which makes 12 servings. If you want to freeze leftovers that’s fine. We’re just making it for our family so 2 cups works well and we serve it in a bowl since there’s more of the sauce to go around. I did make a note to make more rice next time though since my son ate more than I expected – hence the 2-4 cups I put in the recipe. And while I’m talking about rice, we use brown rice all the time and I love the Uncle Ben’s or Minute Rice quick cooking brown rice. It’s so worth it to have brown rice in 10-12 minutes as opposed to 30-40!