A Simple and Cooked Salsa: So easy!

What You'll Need

1.  Stock pot big enough to boil your ingredients, probably a 5 - 6 quart pot, and a slotted spoon or pasta spider

2.  5 medium-sized tomatoes, remove the stems if needed

3.  4 medium-sized jalapeno peppers, remove the stems if needed

4.  8 individual cloves of fresh garlic, peeled

5.  Salt

6.  Blender or food processor

The Method

1.  Fill up stock pot with water and put onto high heat, salting the water heavily (this helps it boil faster and imparts some needed salt into the salsa)

2.  Take your tomatoes and stem them, then cut a small X into them at their rounded bottoms (opposite the stem side)....put them and the peeled garlic and the jalapeno peppers into water

3.  Allow water to heat up and rapid boil for about 2 minutes, until the tomato skins begin to peel away from the tomatoes (this is the part where you are cooking the ingredients)

4.  After your 2 minutes of boil time, remove all ingredients with a slotted spoon/pasta spider and then go peel the tomatoes completely of their skins (CAUTION: They will be hot!) Discard skins when done.

5.  YOu will now have slightly boiled and softened tomatoes (sans skin), jalapeno peppers, and garlic cloves, ready for the next step which is...

6.  ...putting them all into that blender, in small batches, and blending them on the harshest setting you have. (Mine is "liquefy") Add salt as you blend, eyeballing it for now.

7.  When all ingredients have been blended into an orangish liquid, with pieces of garlic and tomato and jalapeno pepper still visible but not obtrusively so, then taste it and add salt as needed. It will be warm and comforting, so I recommend using your chips of choice to do the final tasting before service. There's nothing like a warm salsa.

NOTES:

When finished, this salsa will not be a bright and vivid red, as it would be if the ingredients were crudo (raw). It will be orangish in color.

Also, please note this salsa is amazing when served at room temperature. Once you refrigerate it, (covered, of course), it will gently thicken but lose some of its rustic quality. This is not to say you will ruin it if you refrigerate it, no, but it will not be the same as when eaten warm or at room temp. So allow it to come back to room temp if you refrigerate it. Please. :)