Fire Roasted Tomato and Pineapple Salsa

Sandy's Fire Roasted Tomato and Pineapple Salsa

I have a 10 year old who loves to be in the kitchen.

It is his personality to design his own recipes, and sees it as an utter lack of creativity to follow one created by someone else.

While sweet and cute and adorable, his need to always do it his way doesn't always serve him well in the kitchen.

But sometimes it does.  He actually has good cooking instincts.

This summer I'm asking him to practice following recipes, and then tweak them to make them his own.

I asked him to make this Salsa for me last night while I worked on dinner.  After resigning himself to the uncreative-task-at-hand, he got busy and loved every minute of it.

This is an absolutely fantastic salsa recipe.

I'll never buy jarred salsa again - unless I'm in a pinch.

This recipe comes from Sandy Thomas, Holistic Health Coach (www.zenchoice.com).  Many of you locals have heard me rave about Sandy's cooking classes I recently finished.  If you want more information on Sandy's services, please let me know!

Brennan only tweaked this recipe in one way - he added garlic.  I had jotted this down on the recipe during class - Sandy offered it as a good addition to her original recipe.  Brennan saw this as his opportunity to "tweak", and it worked beautifully.

Brennan started by chopping pineapple and then measuring out 1 cup of cilantro, showing lots of patience pulling the leaves off the stems (a few stems are OK since this will be blended).

Then he zested a lime (don't worry, I showed him how to flip the microplane over after this photo), and juiced it.  He then added salt, cumin, and garlic powder and blended it for 10 seconds.

Brennan then added a can of fire-roasted tomatoes and a can of mild Rotel. 

If you like a milder salsa you can use two cans of fire-roasted tomatoes instead of the Rotel. 

If you like it hotter, you can use the hot version of Rotel.

He pulsed the salsa 6 times to get it to the consistency he likes, and was ready to transfer it to a bowl.

Gorgeous!

Because the boys aren't tomato fans, they tend not to like salsas - what with the chunky tomatoes and all.  This salsa though - Brennan absolutely loved!

We decided to follow Sandy's advice and let the flavors "marry" overnight in the fridge.

Tonight we ate chips and salsa while playing a serious game of Apples to Apples (David stomped us).

The salsa was fantastic - and I watched (slightly amazed) that Thomas and Brennan gobbled it up.

I'm proud of Brennan for his creation, and I'm happy to have a delicious salsa recipe!

Double click to print as a 5x7 recipe card.

Buen Provecho!