My dear friend, PK, has given Besotted much love, support, and advice from the very beginning, and I am finally taking his advice from way back when to include a salsa recipe….

As much as I love baking, its precision and the inability to taste-test the recipe as I go stifles my…. creative flair. I love recipes that have a very basic base to which I can add anything that happens to cross my mind. That, coupled with the fact that Boston will be hitting 90° today (!) made it imperative that I start my Summer Salsa Experiments a bit early.

Salsa is a great dish for experimentation and for the novice cook, as it is very nearly impossible to mess up. I was about to write that as long as you have a base of tomatoes and onions, adding the rest of the ingredients is just a matter of personal preference, but, in fact, this recipe contains no tomatoes, so even that element is subject to change.

My only suggested guidelines would be to find juicy fruits and vegetables whose flavors meld well together, add a few complementary spice/spicy elements, blitz together until you reach the desired consistency and serve.

Speaking of which, the serving and presentation of salsa can be a varied as the ingredients. It is generally thought of as an accompaniment to tortilla chips, and it does serve admirably in this capacity, but salsas can also serve a more sophisticated function, accompanying pork or chicken recipes as a stuffing or sauce, as a topping on toasted baguettes, etc. They are, in essence, wildly versatile.

The following is my adaptation of a Barefoot Contessa recipe. A few tweaks to the ingredient list and preparation yielded this sweet, spicy, and very flavorful salsa. It’s perfect on tortilla chips, and, to be perfectly honest, I probably wouldn’t try it on anything more sophisticated; it has a very casual, almost raucous flavor that would be too much for something attempting sophistication. It would be like wearing cut-offs and drinking Sam Summer at the Symphony – both are fine in their own right, but don’t really go together.

Mango Kiwi Salsa

Adapted from Barefoot Contessa Mango Salsa

Ingredients:

2 Tbls. Olive Oil

1 Red Onion, quartered

3 Cloves Garlic

1 Tbls. Ginger, peeled

1 Mango, peeled and cut into slices

1 Kiwi, peeled and cut into slices

Juice from 1 Orange

1 Jalapeno Chili, seeded & chopped

½ Tsp. Salt

½ Tsp. Pepper

Preparation:

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the ginger and garlic a couple of times, until it looks ‘rough chopped.’ Add the onion and pulse until the onion is well chopped.

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the chopped onion, ginger, and garlic. Cook for 10 minutes. Quite a bit of the liquid from the onion should be cooking off.

I use red onions for the pretty puce color

Meanwhile, in the same bowl of the food processor, blitz the mango and kiwi until chopped, but still chunky (about 6 pulses).

After the onion mixture has cooked for 10 minutes, add the juice from the orange and allow to cook for another 5 minutes.

Once the 5 minutes is up, turn the heat down to medium-low, add the chopped jalapeno, salt & pepper, and cook for another 3-5 minutes.

Remove the saute pan from the heat and allow to cool for 15 minutes before adding to the mango/kiwi mixture. Mix well and serve with tortilla chips.

Summer, here I come!

I have a confession to make…. I started Besotted with more than just the goal of jotting down my favorite recipes and rambling about my culinary experiences. I desperately want to get people back into the kitchen, and for them to do more than peel back the plastic on a microwaveable meal or ‘add water’ to make a meal magically puff up before their eyes.

It’s an absurd quest in our multi-tasking, over-taxed, over-stressed world, but I’m taking it on, and if there’s one recipe in my arsenal to battle the delivery-guy, grocery-store-prepared-foods, and the like, it’s this one, because it takes 15 minutes from grocery bag to table. Not only is it easy and quick, but the flavors – fresh chilis, ginger, garlic, and lemon – will instantly remind you why fresh always tastes best.

Toss in a few large shrimp and some olive oil-soaked toast, and you have a pretty spectacular meal that you can be eating before the pizza delivery guy has even put on his hat.

Start with big, fat shrimp (16-20 count). They're the focus of the meal and should be generously sized.

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Shrimp, Chilis & Ginger, Serves 2

Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Happy Days with the Naked Chef

Ingredients:

3 Tbls. Olive Oil

2 Tsp Fresh Ginger, peeled and finely chopped

3 Cloves of Garlic, peeled and finely chopped

3 Fresh Chilis (Habanero, Jalapeno, etc. according to your taste), deseeded* and rough chopped

2/3lb. Large shrimp (16-20 count), tails and shells removed

Juice from 1 Lemon

½ Cup of Fresh Flat-leaf Parsley, rough chopped

3 Tbls. Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

6 Slices of French Baguette, toasted

Sea Salt and Fresh Pepper to taste

Preparation:

Plate your toasted French baguette, 3 slices per person and set aside.

Heat a saute pan over medium-medium-high heat until nicely hot. Add the olive oil, ginger, chilis, garlic, and shrimp. Cook, stirring constantly for 90 seconds; turn the shrimp onto the uncooked side and cook for another 90 seconds.

Turn the heat down to medium-low. Add the lemon juice, parsley, and extra-virgin olive oil. Stir for 30 seconds and remove from the heat.

Pour the shrimp and sauce over the plated toasted baguettes. Season to taste and serve.

*Please take extra care with deseeding chilis. The last thing you want to do is get the seeds under your nails or near your nail bed, nor do you want to touch your face after handling the seeds. If you’re new to this, rubber gloves are your best defense. If you want to live dangerously, wield a paring knife (small and easy to manage), split the chili in half lengthwise, and flick the offending seeds into the sink or garbage, taking care not to touch them.