Tomatillos

I’ve never bought or cooked with tomatillos before, but here they are in my box! I haven’t stopped dreaming about the amazing green tomato salsa my friend Laura made when I went to visit her over Labor Day Weekend. I enticed her a while ago to post the recipe to grouprecipes.com, and I remembered from her recipe description that the salsa could also be made with tomatillos, so I decided to give it a try.

I ended up with something quite different from the salsa I remembered Laura making – where hers was predominantly smoky, mine was sweet. But it had an addictive quality and I found my dreams quickly shifting to a new object of desire… As with Laura’s version, this sweet, light, delicious tomatillo salsa was incredible in scrambled eggs. Shown below with my new favorite breakfast food ever, Lightlife Tempeh Bacon, and a gorgeous Rome Beauty Apple from the box.

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Roasted Tomatillo Salsa (courtesy of dear friend Laura)

Ingredients

1 onion
3 cloves garlic
8 green tomatoes or 16 tomatillos

2 jalapenos
juice of 1 lime
salt

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put a little olive oil in two baking dishes. Leave the skin of the onion on. Slice it in half and put the onion in the baking dish, cut side down. LEave the peels on the garlic. Slice the tops quarter-inch off the cloves of garlic off. Put the garlic in sliver foil, pour a little oil over the cloves, and close the silver foil. Put it in the baking dish. Place the jalapenos and green tomatoes in the second baking dish. Bake for an hour, until the cut edges of the onion are brown and carmelized, and the garlic is squishy and golden. Bake the jalapenos and tomatoes for twenty minutes, until slightly softened.
When cool enough to handle, remove the skins from the onions and garlic. Mince the onion into a mushy paste. Chop the tomatoes to small, quarter-inch pieces. (Note: if you are using a blender or a food processor instead of a mortar and pestle, you can chop the onion and tomatoes very coarsely.) Remove the stems from the jalapenos, slice them lengthwise, and remove the gills and most of the seeds. (Leaving more seeds will make the salsa hotter).
If available, place all in the ingredients in a matate, a stone mortar and pestle. Or use a blender or food processor. Grind or chop until pureed, though still chunky. Add lime juice and salt to taste.

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