One year ago this month I started my blog and one of the recipes I featured in December was a festive cranberry corn salsa that I used to make mostly from canned goods. That's not such a bad thing, especially if you're short on time. But since I like to control the sodium and freshness of the ingredients I use I decided to make it from fresh ingredients. The salsa tastes great either way though.
Fresh Cranberry Corn Salsa
RECIPE:
Make a basic cranberry sauce of your choice
The rest:
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro, if you are not fond of cilantro, substitute with fresh parsley
1 Anaheim pepper, or 1/2-3/4 cup, diced
1/3 cup diced red onion
1 cup corn, preferably from frozen bag
About 1 tablespoon honey or sugar, or both to reduce tartness
I started with a basic cranberry sauce.
The heat you want in the salsa is up to you. I chose mild heat from an Anaheim pepper, which is the first pepper on the left below. The middle pepper is a Cubanelle and is mild with no heat and would be a good substitute if Anaheims aren't available. The dark green pepper on the right is a Poblano with stronger heat and usually needs to be roasted to reduce the heat.
I sliced open the pepper, scrapped out the seeds and membranes, sliced into strips, then diced them.
Next, I diced one quarter of a medium red onion.
Total amount of Anaheim pepper and red onion is about 1/2-3/4 cup pepper (or one Anaheim) and about 1/3 cup red onion. And total amount of chopped fresh cilantro is about 1/4 cup.
I let the salsa sit for about 30 minutes to build flavor. After tasting, I thought it was a little tart so I added more honey/sugar. Please buy local honey or know your source - there have been reports of possible tainted honey.
Fresh and delicious!
Another option for the Cranberry Corn Salsa: the Anaheim peppers can be roasted (to be more like canned chopped chili peppers), see below, like I did to make the salsa with leftover Thanksgiving cranberry sauce. This will make them taste sweeter but also more work! It also requires more peppers to make the salsa. Either way, the salsa ends up tasting the same. If you want to roast the peppers, I used four Anaheim peppers for that recipe.
Mostly organic and local.
