The Ultimate Easy to Prepare Vegetarian Recipes Cookbook - Tomato and Avocado Salsa

Tomato and Avocado Salsa

Ingredients:

Tomatoes                                 ¾ cup

Avocado                                 ¼ cup

Onion                                      2 tablespoons

Cilantro, chopped                   1 teaspoon or as desired

Lemon                                     1 teaspoon or as desired

Jalapeno pepper                       2 tablespoons or as desired

Cumin                                     ¼ to ½ teaspoon

Salt                                          Season to taste

Pepper, white                          Season to taste

To Prepare:

Core the tomatoes and wash them. Wash the avocados and remove the flesh from the skin and seed. Chop both up into small cubes, approximately the same size.

Wash and peel the onions and chop finely. Do the same for the Jalapeno peppers. Wash the cilantro and also chop finely, including the stem.

To prepare, place all of the ingredients together and mix. Season to taste with the salt, pepper, and lemon juice. If avocadoes aren’t in season, you can use pineapples, ripe mangoes, or even just plain tomatoes instead.

Peanut Sauce

Ingredients:

Coconut cream                        1 cup

Fish sauce                                1 tablespoon

Garlic, minced                         1 tablespoon

Sesame oil                               1 teaspoon

Peanut butter                           3 to 5 tablespoons or as desired

Red chilli, optional                  1 tablespoon

Salt                                          Season to taste

Pepper, white                          Season to taste

Peel and wash the garlic before mincing.

In a saucepan on medium heat, combine all of the ingredients together and gently whisk until everything is incorporated. Don’t forget to season with salt and pepper. This recipe is great for an Asian themed salad dressing or even as a dipping sauce for vegetable sticks. If you don’t have red chillis, you can use a small amount of Thai red curry paste just to spice things up a little.

Whatever sauce or dressing you plan on using for your salad, it is very important to keep a few principles in mind. Vinaigrettes and salad dressings need to be strong in flavor because the taste dulls when you eat it with the greens. When you’re taste testing, don’t just taste the dressing directly on a spoon; dip a salad leaf in and eat both the leaf and the dressing. Try it out for yourself and you’ll know exactly what I’m getting at.

Wet salad greens are the bane of every salad. With a water barrier on the leaves, the dressing won’t stick and you’ll end up with a soggy mess that’s closer to a vegetable soup than a fresh, crisp salad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to wash your greens before eating them but they need to be dry before you toss them in a vinaigrette or dressing and that’s where a salad spinner comes in. Give your salad greens a quick spin and they’ll be dry enough to hold on to your favourite dressing.

There’s another way to ruin what could have been a good salad and that’s tossing the greens in dressing long before you plan on eating them. Combine the greens and dressing too early and what was once a bunch of crisp leaves will become soggy and sad. Always toss your greens in dressing a la minute or last minute and you can enjoy salad at its best.

This is an excerpt from the book:  The Ultimate Easy to Prepare Vegetarian Recipes Cookbook