Splendid Salsa & Women of Taste

I've been making salsa from scratch lately. This one was really good, and tasty, kind of tart, and a nice spice to it. It was made using tomatillos from the farmer's market. They look kind of like green tomatoes with a papery husk. But the plant isn't related to tomato at all (same family, different genus). They are funny little fruits and kind of sticky when you take the husk off. I actually grew them from seed one year in my strawberry patch, the plants are kind of sparse and don't make a lot of shade, so it worked out pretty well.
In this first picture, I was missing a major ingredient, the cilantro! OOps... The second picture shows the true color and taste we were looking for.

Here's the super easy recipe for the salsa from The Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent DragonWagon, one of my fave vegetarian cookbooks.
Tomatillo Salsa Verde

• 1 1/2 pounds fresh tomatillos, husks removed
• 1/2 large onion, quartered
• 1/2 cup cilantro leaves and stems, coarsley chopped
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 to 2 fresh serrano chiles or jalapeno peppers, stemmed
• 1 teaspoon salt

Combine all the ingredients in a food processor. Buzz until smooth. That's it finito! Now is that fast or what?

I first encountered Crescent DragonWagon (awesome name eh?) in an art quilt/chef exhibit, called Women of Taste, it was a benefit for a great organization called Girls,Incorporated of Alameda County, the exhibit traveled around the country through the Smithsonian. She was paired with quilt artist Nancy Halpern . who was inspired by the chef's evocative name. C&T Publishing put out a great book of the exhibit which is worth finding
as it has great pictures, and a record of the collaboration, letters back and forth between artist and chef. Very interesting.