Salsa Verde

I know all about green tomatoes; they're the ones that have not yet turned red. I'm not daft. "Not necessarily so" cries Gardener Hils, fresh from her greenhouse. "They might be Tomatillos". And with this she plonked down the first pickings of her tomatillo crop in triumph. Take that, sir! Now, I don't know tomatillos from tomahawks so I googled it. You can do this with your tomatillos and you can do that but what you must do is make Salsa Verde.

 

Here they are, fresh from the greenhouse. Tomatillos, also known as Green tomatoes, or Mexican tomatoes or Husk tomatoes. Ain't they lovely?

Odd looking coves; half way between a normal tomato and one of those Cape Gooseberry physalis things. Lovely shade of green but not all of them are green; depends on the variety. Thank you Gardener Hils, now sod off.

Here are the ingredients for Salsa Verde (green sauce for those deprived of a classical education) You need tomatillos and a variety of all the usual green suspects: green onions, green chilli peppers, limes and a nice bunch of coriander leaves or the one that you had left over from last week. Garlic because it's good for you and a red chilli because I like the colour; it goes nicely with the green (I only used the green ones)

Grill the tomatillos, peppers and garlic for about 5-6 minutes. This is supposed to bring out the flavours. Allow to cool.

Here's the roughly chopped grilled veg ready to go into the blitzing pot with all the other roughly chopped ingredients plus a bit of salt and white sugar.

Traditionalists would do the blitzing with a pestle and mortar but I am a yob, so I shoved in me hand blender and gave it some welly. Whizzzz, Whizzzzzz!

Salsa Verde in a sweet little dish.

And finally, salsa verde and tortilla chips, vicar? Oooh, don't mind if I do. Of course, we had to have the usual chilli farce. I only put one in as I did not want it to be too hot for little Miss Sensitive gob; I thought it only fair that she should have a taste considering that she grew the tomatillos and defended them from slug attacks.

"Hmmm, it's alright",  I said "It's a bit mild though; could definately do with a bit more chilli". Hilsey dips her tortilla chip in the green stuff, places it delicately in her mouth and promptly goes bright red in the face and lets out an ear-piercing scream "Aaaarghhhh!!! It's like red-hot lava!!!!!!!!" As usual.

She's too sensitive, that girl. Should have had a lot more vindaloos as a nipper. Quite nice, the old salsa verde; needs a bit more chilli though.