Some like it raw!
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Fall is rapidly approaching, but tonight M and I pretended it was still August by enjoying a summery dinner of pasta with yellow tomato salsa cruda and seared scallops.
Italian-style salsa cruda is very easy to make. Take four or five nice ripe tomatoes (I used garden-fresh yellow ones — thanks Aaron!), and skin, core, and seed them. Chop up the remaining pulp (the good part) and place in a non-reactive bowl (such as ceramic). Then smash two or three cloves of garlic and toss it into the tomatoes. Next, add a bunch of chopped up fresh herbs — basil is a must, but you can also add parsley and perhaps a small amount of oregano. Finally, drizzle in a few glugs of good quality olive oil. Set aside — at room temperature — for an hour or two.
Salsa cruda, as the name suggests, is uncooked. It’s all about the freshness of the tomatoes and the herbs. No cooking required. Don’t refrigerate because the chill will diminish the flavour.
When you are ready to eat, boil some pasta. I prefer to use a contrasting color, so plain pasta would work well with red tomato salsa cruda, but since my tomatoes were yellow I used a nice orangey-red spaghetti al pepperoncino. As the pasta boils, add some salt and freshly ground pepper to the salsa cruda (with fresh food, salt and pepper should always be added very close to serving time). When the pasta is done, drain it and immediately add it to the room-temperature salsa, and toss.
To round out the meal and add some protein, I seared some scallops in butter for a couple of minutes as the pasta was boiling. Then I added a splash of white wine to the scallops and covered it to let them steam for a minute.
On the plate, I sprinkled a bit of piment d’Espelette on the scallops for color and a bit of firey but not overwhelming zing. Served with a crisp white wine it was a delicious way to celebrate the harvest!
Note: You can also make salsa cruda a day in advance and refridgerate overnight. However, it will be more liquidy because some of the water will extract from the pulp as it sits. Also, you should remove it from the fridge an hour or so in advance to bring it back to room temperature.