rebeccmeister | Homegrown tomatoes [roasted chipotle salsa]

Some of the Black Prince tomatoes have been growing in a lewd fashion:

...but the plants have been generating plenty of tomatoes to work with, so we aren't complaining. The fruits aren't as delicious as when I've grown this variety in Arizona, because the Bay Area doesn't get warm enough in the summer. Still - it's good to have homegrown tomatoes to work with.

There's this Roasted Chipotle Salsa recipe in the Ball canning book that has been a great starting point for improvised salsa recipes with whatever peppers and tomatoes are on hand. Hopefully today's batch came out well. I used a miscellaneous set of peppers that

sytharin brought home from a coworker, red onions that she grew in the garden, a head and a half of garlic, and five or six hot Hatch chilies. Plus maybe 5 or 6 pounds of tomatoes. Everything went under the broiler to roast until skins browned and burst open (this is about 2 sheet pans' worth of stuff in total). I also pan-toasted some dried puya chilies and then soaked them in warm water. After broiling, I threw most of the various peppers into the food processor and blended them into a paste. Then I used the food processor to chop up the skinned garlic and onions and Hatch chilies - just two pulses or so. The tomatoes were watery, so I drained off the water and simmered it down separately. Meanwhile, I cored the roasted tomatoes and gave them a whirl in the food processor.

Everything went into the giant Dutch oven cauldron, along with 2 C of white vinegar, 2 tsp of salt, and a couple teaspoons of sugar. I brought it all to a boil for a couple of minutes, then ladled it into canning jars and processed the jars in the water bath canner for 20 minutes.

In the past, I have tried hand-chopping everything after roasting, and it's a pain, but feasible if you don't have a food processor. That will just make for more chunky salsa.

We have lost 2 cucumbers to mold so far.