Fresh summer vegetables from Pennsylvania's Adams County, and I'm sure your area, make some specific recipes jump to our minds. For our family, one of our favorite summer treats is a fresh, homemade salsa. There are as many recipes for salsa as there are people making it, and my version seems to change every time I make it.
That variety is a positive thing; I use my recipe as a road map. Start with a basic plan, but pick the best looking, freshest ingredients and adapt the map to fit the produce. The downloadable recipe below can be a starting point. Use what you pick up at your local market. (My ingredients were from the always wonderful Adams County Farm Fresh Markets in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.)
While raw veggies in a salsa are great as is, grilling some can add some depth to the texture, color and taste. I tend to use both grilled and raw ingredients, and will even use both versions of the same ingredient. (Particularly the tomatoes; grill some and leave others raw. In this batch, the larger tomatoes are grilled while the small ones were raw.) After prepping the vegetables, the ones to be grilled are placed on the grill rack and pulled off as each reached the perfect stage. The attached recipe notes my suggestions, but adapt to your preference.
For the tomatoes, for example, I tend to pull them off when the skins begin to pull loose. At that stage, it's easy to remove them with your fingers or tongs.
After doing a rough chop of the grilled and raw vegetables, the salt, olive oil, vinegar and lime juice are added.
I've found the best flavor to be after chilling the salsa for a few hours, but certainly eaten with a day or two. If your family is like mine, you won't have any problems finishing this treat during the first sitting.
To download an easily-printed pdf file of the recipe, click here. Let me know what you think or note what you do in your salsa recipe below in the comment section.