Rick Bayless Mexican Feast, Part 1: Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa

(from Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen)

Back in college, our friend Joseph treated us to a Mexican feast inspired by chef Rick Bayless. Over five years later, I still remember that meal. It was delicious, different, and I left fantastically stuffed.

Since then, I've made a couple things from the Mexican Kitchen cookbook - specifically, the Chipotle Shrimp and the Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa. But I hadn't really done much more than that - every recipe in the book looks amazing, but I will say that they're not exactly the kind of recipes that you just pick up and decide to make after work. So when we had our friends Steve and Johnna over for dinner last night, I decided to test out a few more.

The meal was great - even if we ended up eating the final course after 10:30pm. We started with the tried-and-true salsa and shrimp, and then...hours later...had Classic Red Tomato Rice (which uses the same salsa) and Red-Chile Braised Chicken with Potatoes and Greens.

I'll do this post in four installments, one for each dish. Note that if you were making this salsa and the tomato rice, you'd just double the salsa recipe and use half (2 cups) for the rice. Also, if you were making all the dishes at once, you could roast five tomatoes and about 20 cloves of unpeeled garlic, to save time (which I clearly did not).

So, for starters: Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa! (2 cups)

2 medium-large round tomatoes
2 large fresh jalapeno chiles
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 small white onion, very finely chopped and rinsed/drained
1/3 cup loosely packed cilantro, chopped
1 1/2 tsp cider vinegar (optional)

You start by roasting the tomatoes, jalapenos, and unpeeled garlic. Place the tomatoes on a baking sheet right below a very hot oven broiler. Roast until the skins begin to blacken, then flip and roast until the other side does the same. In the meantime, place the jalapenos and the garlic on a frying pan or skillet over medium. Turn them occasionally until both are blackened in spots.

In the meantime, place the chopped onion, cilantro, and cider vinegar in a bowl.

Remove the tomatoes from the oven and let cool with the jalapenos and the garlic, then remove the skin from the tomatoes, the peels from the garlic, and the stems from the jalapenos.

Combine the jalapenos and garlic in a food processor and 1/4 tsp of the salt until they make a coarse paste. Transfer into a blender and add the tomatoes. (You could do it all in the blender, but the garlic and jalapenos get broken down better in the smaller food processor, at least mine.)

Pour the tomato mixture into your bowl with the onion, stir, and add the remaining 1/4 tsp salt. Let it sit and cool for awhile (you can put it in the fridge), then serve with tortilla chips!