I’ve had a hankerin’ for salsa all week.  And when our friends Lori and Ev were talking about making fresh homemade tamales yesterday, I knew that salsa had to be made today.

Fruit salsas are one of my most favorite summertime treats.  Stone fruits – peaches, apricots, plums, nectarines – along with strawberries and other berries, make for some really fine eating when mixed with onions and hot peppers.  A couple of minutes of dicing is all it takes.

I just wanted enough to top a pork tenderloin tonight, so I picked up two plums, two apricots, and two jalapeño peppers.  Jalapeños are notoriously wussie around here.

I diced up the fruit, a bit of red onion, a bit of cilantro, a squeeze of lime, and one pepper – seeds and all.  As I said, jalapeños are notoriously wussie around here.

Well wouldn’t ya know…  I finally found a hot one!  A really hot one!  This one was just short of uncurling my eyelashes.  I had even taken a bite off the tip of the pepper and it didn’t seem  hot at all.

I had some strawberries in the ‘fridge so i chopped them up to add just a bit more sweetness and to dilute the heat a bit.

It worked.  The end result was hot – but a sweet, edible hot. And it all went perfectly onto a salad.

The salad was mixed greens with a diced zucchini and a really fresh and ripe tomato.   Victor made a creamy dressing with mayonnaise, sour cream, chili sauce, diced pickle, and grated garlic.  I grilled a pork tenderloin and set that on the greens and then added the salsa on top.

It was just spicy enough and the creamy dressing calmed everything down.

I saved the rest of the salsa for chips tomorrow.

Yum.