How To Make Fresh Salsa

I am going to show you how to make fresh tomato salsa. Let’s start with the tomatoes. If you are doing a chopped salsa as opposed to one that you've pureed or blended, it's important that it looks really nice so you need to be careful that everything is of similar size and shape so that when you put it on the plate, it looks attractive. So, we are going to concasse these tomatoes. So, having chopped your tomatoes nice and uniformly, beautifully, you move onto your red onion. Cut it in half and then peel it because it is much easier to peel a half onion than it is to peel a whole one. Trim off the top, trim off the bottom but leave some of the root intact. Then, you want to make slices from the root to the tip but not cutting all the way through. Turn it 90 degrees and cut across those slices and you get your beautifully diced red onion which will match nicely with the chopped tomato. Now, chilli, the thing with chillies is that chances are you're not going to know how hot the chilli is before you use it, and there is only one way to remedy that, and that is by tasting it. Then, you know how hot it is. I would suggest scraping the seeds out, unless you like your salsa really nice and hot, because most of the heat, the real burning heat, will be in the seeds and the pit. Then, take your half a chilli and then, again, same kind of thing, slice it lengthwise and then slice it across. So you've got smaller dice, then the onion and tomato, but nonetheless, even and uniform across the chilli. I'm going to change knives now. So, there's the onion, the tomato and the chilli, to that we are going to add some chopped, finely chopped coriander, and now garlic. Now, depending on who you ask, they'll say salsa should have lots of garlic in it, or they'll say salsa should never have garlic. Their opinion is strongly divided on this one. I like garlic so I'm going to put garlic in. For this, I will suggest that you really finely chop, almost turn the garlic into a paste so you peel it, mash it with your knife like that, and then chop it as finely as possible. Now, that's pretty much it for ingredients with the exception of what remains as really seasoning, okay. So, what you want to do is some salt which really helps bring out the flavour, especially of the tomato, and it also helps with the coriander, too. Some pepper, and then some sugar, it's always a good idea with tomato is to add some sugar because it just helps balance the acidity, and also it kind of softens and broadens out those quite sharp flavours that you've got in there. A little bit of red wine vinegar, and I mean a little bit because it's quite strong taste, you don't want to overpower what's already in there. What you’re trying to do is just lift and accentuate the flavours that are in that bowl. So, just a little sprinkle like that, and finally, and this, I would say is an optional ingredient, too - some extra virgin olive oil. So, get all those ingredients well combined and have a taste. Excellent! You can really taste all the individual ingredients but together, they make something really, really powerful and delicious. But you can taste the tomato and the coriander and the onion and everything. So, there you go, fresh tomato salsa.