Traffic Light Salsas

First Sunday in Summer

It’s a lovely day; our courtyard is bathed in sun.
We are preparing it for Summer Proper ready to entertain...
and it’s a bit of a mess. Can’t use the table as it is getting a nice new surface; so lunch had to be eaten inside.
I made bread. I used the Chili and Cheese Bread recipe posted in February 2006.

My friend Diana gave me a French Bread loaf tin.
I decided to bake the bread in that.

A hint from Alton Brown of Good Eats fame on Food TV was to brush the bread with a cornflour and water slurry to get a nice even browning.
Good idea…See





To accompany the bread I made 2 salsas.
A great Christmas look.
A Green one, red and you can also make an orange one.
Very simple and very pretty what an asset for the buffet table.
Here goes:

Traffic Light Salsas
Green
10 cm piece cucumber peeled seeded and large dice
½ green freshly ground black pepper deseeded and large dice
2 x spring onions chopped
1 green chili chopped
½ avocado diced
Coriander finely chopped and of Fresh mint finely chopped
Juice 1 small lime
Extra virgin olive oil drizzled over
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Mix everything together

Red
2 x tomatoes chopped
½ red pepper deseeded large dice
1 x red chili chopped
½ red onion diced
Juice ½ lemon
Extra virgin olive oil drizzled over
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mix everything together

Orange (Not pictured I didn't have the ingredients on hand)
1 mango diced
½ small papaya diced
½ orange pepper
1 clove garlic finely chopped
White balsamic vinegar
Extra virgin olive oil drizzled over
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mix everything together

Made it the other day so here it is


An excellent accompaniment for the fresh bread.



BBQ Steak

I grilled 2 beautiful steaks for dinner.
Buy the New York cut of steak it is thicker
Which makes better control over the “doneness”
of the meat. About 2-3 cms thick should give best results.

A dry rub is a great marinade.
On this occasion I used Cajun spices
Just massaged it into the meat on both sides
and let sit about ½ hour

Get the grill really hot sprinkle it with some sea salt and olive oil

Bang on the hot grill listen to the sizzle.
Don’t move for about 1 minute turn 90 degrees
to get the lovely criss cross pattern
Cook for about 3 minutes
Turn over and same on the other side.
Remove from grill set aside and rest for 5 minutes

This gave me med rare steaks.


I slice them on the diagonal and served with potato salad and
the remainder of the green salsa.

It gave us a real taste of how summer is going to be.
How exciting…