My type of salsa!
The month is not even over but I’m already short of money. I was thinking what to do to avoid spending even more money for food this week. I took a look into my fridge to check what I could use up. I had tomatoes, onions, garlic and a lot of vinegar. The first thing that came to my mind was a salsa, but not the typical salsa in the form of a dip or sauce. I wanted to make something more like antipasti, an appetizer to be eaten with bread. One more thing I had at home were physalis fruits, so the idea came up to make a half spicy, half sweet salsa. Of course, I will tell you what I did differently when preparing my salsa. Please keep in mind that my recipe is only for a small bowl of salsa. If you want to prepare more salsa, you need to multiply the ingredients according to your needs!
Ingredients
- 4 – 5 roughly chopped tomatoes, stems removed
- 12 chopped physalis
- 1 diced onion
- 3 roughly chopped garlic cloves
- 3 cayenne chilis or jalapeno pepper
- 3 – 5 black olives
- 1/2 cup chopped parsley or other herbs
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tbsp fresh lime juice
- 1/3 cup white wine vinegar
Instructions
Peel the husks off the physalis fruits and rinse well in cold water. Roughly chop or quarter the physalis fruit.
Start with chopping up 4 – 5 medium sized fresh tomatoes. Prepare the onion, the garlic, the olives, the parsley and the chilies in the same way, chopping them in chunky pieces and combining all the ingredients in a big pot. Set aside some of the seeds from the chilies if you don’t want your salsa to be too spicy.
Now add the sea salt, cumin, lime juice and a 1/3 cup of red wine vinegar into the pot with all the other ingredients. You can also use fruit vinegar and mix it with red wine. Cook on medium heat for about 20 minutes, until everything is simmering and tender. To make a salsa dip or sauce puree with an immersion blender and cook everything for another 20 minutes on medium heat, stirring occasionally until it starts to be slightly thickened.
To make a chunky “antipasti” salsa like I did, don’t use an immersion blender. Simply cook the ingredients for 20 – 30 minutes, then separate from the vinegar and put into a mortar if needed.
Salsa is really easy to make and you can prepare it in so many different ways and tastes! I could save some money by simply using up everything I had at home and turning it into this colorful appetizer. Serve it with some bread or use it as a substitute for a salad!
The Brave Cook
Looks really delicious!
Good heavens, what yummy ingredients, except for the physalis fruit, which, though you have shown a picture of it, isn’t familiar to me. I haven’t seen it in the fruit shop, but then maybe they don’t sell it in Australia. What does it taste like? And does it have another name?
Thanks for your comment! I don’t think there is another name for the physalis fruit, but it is one of my favorite fruits, it tastes sweet, similar to small plums. It balances the spicy chili in the salsa.
Physalis is Gooseberry here in Australia, marymtf – tart and delicious. It is usually sold unhusked here, like the picture of the golden orbs above that look a little like yellow cherry tomatoes. 😀
Nicole, thanks so much for giving me another name for the physalis fruit. I was actually looking for that name! Regarding my english skills… this blog helps me a lot to improve my english. By the way, I think Australia is such a beautiful country, love your pics from Australia on your blog!
Very interesting combination of flavours, and the colors look beautiful!
The color is beautiful. Physalis grew wild near my house. I didn’t realize they were edible! Awesome!
This is a great recipe! Thanks for dropping by my blog and liking it.
Looks delicious!!
What a pretty blog! And this particular recipe looks great. I love the little orange ground cherries – not really a local food, though. Oh well!
I’m so excited to find your blog AND to find a recipe with what we call cape gooseberries here in Australia. I have some growing in my garden right now, but they won’t be ready for another few months, so I will store this recipe until then! It looks so pretty and delicious.
Your salsa looks great. Sounds like it would be great as a bruschetta.🙂
Looks amazing. Definitely better than any other salsa I have seen out there…🙂 Thanks for sharing
Love the stills you took of the physalis – naked and in their clothes!
Thanks for sharing this recipe! I can have salsa chips while watching football.
oo yum!!! that looks so delicous!!!🙂
Thanks for stopping by my website so that I could find yours. My teenagers just love spicy salsa and I like how you used the physalis in this dish. Looking forward to keeping in touch. Take care, BAM
Thanks for your comment on my blog. I like your recipe for salsa (I love salsas just on principle). Can your gooseberries (physalis) be substituted with the more common tomatillos, which are the same species?
What a brilliant idea, to include cape gooseberries in a tomato salsa! I have to try this🙂 x
Lovely looking photos here and some excellent food thoughts.
Keep up the great work.
Best,
Conor
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