Cooking with Us: E2: Peter's Famous Salsa

Production still as taken by Theron ;)

Hi Gang!

Welcome to our second installation of 'Cooking With Us' where we feature my best friend, Peter, and his delicioso salsa!

He actually flew down from NYC to surprise me, and decided he'd teach me to make his amazing salsa whilst visiting.  Are you rubbing your eyes?  Yes, he is a native New Yorker, and yes, he makes tremendously amazing salsa!


And yes, I admit our video does sort of sound like an infomercial for the Ninja blender... but, well, the Ninja is awesome!!  We also (shocker alert) made this salsa super spicy - but you can easily adjust it to your own taste.

The video has closed captions and the transcript and recipe will be provided after the jump!!

As with the last video, I highly recommend you set your playback to at least 720 if not 1080.  This time I added music and more transitions, hopefully making it more fun.  I think it's pretty obvious we were having fun!

Enjoy!!

Up the resolution :)          ^

Or go watch it in high-res on youtube :D

For this you will need a blender, clearly we love the Ninja.

Bell peppers are so pretty :)

Recipe:

Peter and I prep while Theron and Brigly
get ready for our BBQ that evening!

- 2 cups red, orange, and yellow bell peppers, chopped
- 4 jalapenos, chopped (you may want to add less or deseed them)
- One small to medium sized white onion, quartered
- 1/4 cup cilantro (or more, to your taste)
- One large can stewed, saltless tomatoes (you will use just the tomatoes and only a small amount of the juice)
- heaping tablespoon tomato paste
- 2 habanero peppers (leave these out if you don't want it to be super hot)
- 2 cloves garlic (feel free to use less or more to your liking)
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons salt
- a fair amount of ground black pepper

Voila!

This is such a simple and yet amazingly good recipe.  You just have to try it for yourself.

Ninja cut these down to size!

Transcript for the video:

My best friend Peter surprised me by flying in from NYC.
Not only that - he also shared his amazingly delicious salsa recipe with us!!

More info on my blog: http://www.kumocafe.com/2013/09/cooking-with-us-e2-peters-famous-salsa.html

Also if you hear noise in the background, it's my husband getting stuff ready for the BBQ we had that night:)

Transcript below:

V: Hi, and welcome to “Cooking at Home With Us.”  Today we have a really special guest, my best friend Peter, who is joining us from New York, who actually surprised me by coming in yesterday, unbeknownst to me.  And today he’s gonna show us how to make his famous salsa.

P: It’s easy and it’s fun.

V: So what’s the first step, Peter?

P: Well basically you’re going to drink a beer.  And then we’re going to take all these really wonderful, bright-colored peppers.  Basically we’re gonna use a knife, and cut off the top. You can do it just kind of ‘rough cut.’  Cut inside… get rid of this guy, and I get rid of the extra…

V: Membranes

P: Membranes. We’re just gonna kinda make these sorta big, inch by an inch or so, doesn’t have to be exact in anyway.

V: Cause later it’s going into the Ninja

P: Oh yes this is going to be obliterated.  Mess-o…

V: Jalapenos

P: Jalapenos.  For our purposes today you want hot, right? Cause you’re a hot salsa person, aren’t you?

V: yep

P: Basically you’re gonna be cutting tip, top, chopping it into maybe a couple bits to make it easier on the blender.  Any blender will do, but none do it as well as the Ninja.
Onions, ok?  This is about a half a cup, maybe that’s a little more than half a cup or so, alright, so it’s a full cup. So you want to cut it in half, quarters, ok… so…
We also have our little habaneros. For one batch, if you want it really spicy you add… four.

V: Especially this color, this color is really spicy.

P: Yep, so basically, we’re gonna do that.  Cut the very little top stem off, we’re gonna pop that out, that little stem remains…
We’re gonna get the tomatoes ready, and we’re gonna need cilantro. So, here we go.
We have our washed cilantro… especially if it’s organic, it’s going to be very dirty, so you gotta make sure you rinse it really well. I personally like the stems… but…

V: So do we.

P: yeah. It depends how cilantro – cilantro-y you like stuff.  This is a pretty good chunk of cilantro, ok, and I think that’s usually about what I use.

V:  Cilantro!

P: Rough chop our cilantro. Also, the Ninja is going to take care of most of this also.

V: Also it smells amazing.

P: It smells amazing. We’re gonna use one of these little pods for garlic.

V: A clove is that.

P: Just one.

V: Yeah, a clove.

P: Yeah. And if you want it garlic-ier you could prolly add two.

V: Ok now what?

P: You have a dog on your shoulder.

V: Oh my gosh, how embarrassing, I’m so sorry.

P: That’s ok.

P: The Obliterator.

V: Yes, don’t cut your fingers no those blades, babe, they will cut them off.

P: They are very sharp. Ok. We’ve got two cups of bell peppers. One jalapeno, two jalapenos, four jalapenos to start with. We’re gonna toss onion… one full onion. We’re also gonna put in the cilantro, and we’re gonna leave it at that.

This is where the magic happens.

So, just that little bit, right?  Is gonna give you that.  We’re gonna open a can of tomatoes, because, we’re not gonna use all the juice. We’re sorta gonna, just kinda, separate it a little bit.  We got a little bit of juice, we’re not gonna add a whole lot. We’ll just give it that, k?
And then we’re gonna add a little tomato paste.  That much.  Dastardly peppers… our two garlic cloves… lemon juice, alright put that in… two tablespoons lemon juice, that’s good to go.  Let’s see what we got.

 You know what we forgot?

V: What?

P: Salt and pepper.

V: I know but, it’s so good… and spicy.  Oh it’s spicy!  Oh habaneros!

P:  Two teaspoons of salt. I’m going to use generous black pepper.

V: So then why don’t you just do it?

P: Hang on this is smug.

V: It’s a good look, and for a good reason.

T: I mean, that’s awesome.

P: That’s the stuff.

V: That is so good.

P: So what’s left to do?

V: Eat it!

P: OK.  Did you like it?

V: I loved it!

P: I say thumbs up.

V: Thumbs up!   Thank you for joining us for this podcast of “Cooking at Home With Us.”  And my best friend Peter, thank you for joining us, and we’ll put the recipe on line. Ciao!

P: Sort of like those dogs in Switzerland where they have the barrels around their neck except… not quite… you could fit him in a barrel.