Roasted Vegetable Salsa

There comes a point when you have to admit that autumn is coming. I’m not ready to think of winter yet, give me time for that... But when summer days start ending on a chilly note and you find yourself reaching for your stash of vests (everyone has one, right?), it’s time to adapt your food to fit. This is often helped on by supermarkets, who begin to stock basic ingredients that just don’t work as well as they did in summer months. Take tomatoes. They’re ripe and juicy in the summer, albeit for a price. By autumn, the packets that grace the shelves are full of fruit as hard as stones and just as tasteless. Luckily, salt, pepper, olive oil and a spell in a hot oven at everyone’s favourite gas mark (6, duh!) is enough to get the tastebuds excited again.

This is a twist on a classic summer salsa that we make at home. Instead of using the ingredients fresh, I chuck the majority in a roasting pan for half an hour, replacing summer crunch with autumn sweetness, smoke and fire.  

Ingredients:

6 medium sized tomatoes, or two large handfuls of smaller ones

1 pepper, any colour

1 small onion, or shallot

4 cloves garlic, skin-on.

½-1 teaspoon chilli flakes, depending on how hot you like it!

Olive oil

½ teaspoon each salt and pepper

½ can of sweetcorn (approx. 4 heaped spoonfuls)

1 large handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped

Juice of one lime.

Method:

1) Line a roasting tray with foil or baking paper and preheat the oven to Gas 6, 200˚C.

2) Halve the tomatoes, rip up the pepper into large chunks, quarter the onion and bash the cloves of garlic. Put these in the roasting tray and drizzle over some olive oil. Add the chilli flakes, salt and pepper, and toss lightly. Roast until charred, for around 40mins to an hour.

Ready for the oven!

3) When the roasted vegetables are cool, squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins.

4) Pulse the vegetables in a food processor just a couple of times, so that they’re roughly chopped.

5) Tip this mixture into a mixing bowl, then stir in the sweetcorn and chopped coriander. Squeeze in the juice of the lime and taste for seasoning- you want sweetness contrasting with sour, plus heat from the chilli.

Serve with tortilla chips as a salsa, but it also tastes great with fish!