our latin party was great fun and i was so lucky with the recipes i chose – with two exceptions all of the ten different dishes i did were absolutely delicious. often this was the result of a mix n match approach to the recipes i found or a bit of gentle tweaking.

my favourite component was this smokey salsa. i used a few thomasina miers recipes as the base for dishes including her recipe for roasted tomato salsa. she talks about the classic mexican technique of frying chillies in a dry pan so they soften and char. in her salsa recipe she adds garlic and red onions to the charring-pan.

she also calls for the tomatoes to be dry-fried whole but that didn’t really work so i roasted half the tomatoes on a baking tray – maximum oven temperature and no seasoning or oil for the tomatoes. both processes result in a lot of smoke, smells and burnt-looking vegetables. these get blitzed with enough fresh tomatoes (this is where i differ from the source recipe which calls for all tomatoes to be roasted) to bring back a hint of freshness which is lifted with coriander, lime and red wine vinegar.

i have never had a salsa with such depth of flavour and really recommend you try this. a fresh tomato salsa has nothing on it. 

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