Cupertino Heirloom Tomato Salsa

I’d gotten it in my head I was going to make some salsa fresca with a variety of heirloom tomatoes. This was something I hadn’t really delved into much due to the limited availability of such in my old digs. But, a few months ago I got some crazy heirloom tomatoes as part of a friend’s CSA that we covered while they were out of town. They were the best tomatoes I’d ever had in my life. I’m very lucky to have a very good (if small) and quite affordable (compared to several of the others nearby) farmers market just a mile from my house every Friday. On this last visit I discovered a vendor I’d never noticed before. When I got to Frank Huguenard’s Bountiful Garden stand, I was pretty sure this was the place to get my tomatoes. Frank is a tall and enthusiastic individual who seemed to be creating fresh mountains of salsa at a furious rate behind his booth that was covered with dozens of tomatoes-no two alike-and a large, inviting bowl of salsa mexicana to sample. It was incredibly good stuff with an astoundingly complex flavor. When I asked how many different styles of tomato he used he said, “oh about 30 or 40”. Wow. Surprisingly, when asked how long he’d been making salsa, he told me that the first time was only a couple weeks ago. I guess he had some unexpected surplus then.

I should mention, Frank is a man with a mission. All money received goes directly to disaster relief efforts. More info on the Bountiful Garden site.

So, yeah, two days later (and still photographing things like t-shirts and swords in the garage, so, therefore still all set up with the lights) I started washing and plucking and slicing and dicing and mixing and making all kinds of a mess. Unlike the peanuts from the other day, these taste as good as they look.

The raw ingredients

plucked and washed

Pico de Gallo

Guacamole