Winter Salsa

I love making salsa, especially ones with fresh, raw ingredients.  Fresh salsa doesn't exactly scream winter, but this one uses things I can get locally pretty much all year around.  Here's the run down...

The main ingredient in this salsa is cabbage.  I like to cut mine with a chef's knife, but if you want to dirty your whole food processor, you can use the slicing blade.  I was not in the mood to spend more time cleaning up than I spent making the salsa to begin with.  You could also add shredded carrot as well, but I didn't have any.  This was all about cleaning out my crisper drawer!  I also had 6 small hot house tomatoes I got from the farm down the road from us.  Even hot house tomatoes pale in comparison to early fall tomatoes, but I like them better than tinned tomatoes (although you could drain diced tomatoes and use those if you wanted).  Besides, tomatoes aren't the star here like they are in summer salsas.  I minced one shallot and one clove of garlic and added that to the bowl.  I seeded and chopped one large fresh jalapeno (from the same farm I got the tomatoes) and chopped a huge handful of fresh cilantro.  I salted it well and added fresh squeezed meyer lemon juice and the juice of one lime.  I sprinkled some red wine vinegar around and finished it with some really good quality Portuguese olive oil.  To me, the real kicker was the tortilla chips I get from the farm.  They get them from a local tortilla maker and they are very lightly salted.  To get them really good, you need to toast them in a 400 degree oven for 7 minutes or so.  Then they are achingly crisp and full of amazing corn flavor.  If you don't live next to a tortilla maker, make the chips yourself using corn tortillas from the store.  You will be so happy you did.  It takes more effort but the pay off is huge.

Make a huge batch of this because not only does it disappear quickly, but it gets better after it sits in the fridge for a day.