Blueberry Habañero Salsa and Fun With Cooking

When I was poking around looking for a way to use my blackberries the other day- before stumbling upon that amazing blackberry muffin recipe I ended up going with- I came across a recipe for Blueberry Habañero Salsa.

This recipe caught  my eye for several reasons- first of all it's weird sounding.

Lets be honest, I seem to have a penchant for weird recipes.  Sometimes they're successes, sometimes they're horrible failures, but they're always always interesting.

A huge part of keeping cooking fun is mixing things up and being just a little brave.

I'd already had sweet and savory blueberry recipes on the mind lately after picking up a delicious bottle of blueberry balsamic vinegar, but I'd been thinking about more straightforward recipes, like reducing it to make a sauce for pork or something like that.  This recipe took blueberries in a totally different direction, and I loved where it was heading.

I have a teeny tiny bit of a love for salsa.

Like the kind that started when I was two or so and my parents caught me eating it with a spoon out of the bowl at the Mexican restaurant.

I saw blueberries.  I saw salsa.

I saw a recipe I knew that I had to make.

This recipe uses blueberries two ways: some are pureed, providing a bit of liquidy base and some are chopped, giving the salsa a bit of body.  The heat comes from habaneros, but the rest of the salsa is pretty basic- cilantro, onion, and tomato.  Honestly, I felt the recipe was a little unbalanced as written and played with it a tiny bit just before serving by adding just a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar and brown sugar.  After those additions it was amazing.

I honestly planned on serving this with the pork loin we had grilled, which was fine, but I found I really liked it best plain with tortilla chips.  I may or may not have polished off the majority of the batch in less than a day.  So good.

I'll definitely be keeping this recipe around for the future- and keeping my eyes open for sales on blueberries!

Blueberry Habañero Salsa

Modified slightly from Allrecipes.com

2 C fresh blueberries, divided

1 white onion, chopped

1 C diced tomatoes

1 C white sugar

4 habañero peppers, seeded and chopped

1/2 C chopped cilantro

1/4 C lime juice

5 cloves garlic, chopped

1/4 tsp garlic salt, or to taste

4 tsp balsamic vinegar

2 tsp brown sugar

1. Place 1 cup blueberries into a blender. Cover and blend until pureed. Coarsely chop remaining blueberries. Combine pureed blueberries, chopped blueberries, onion, tomatoes, sugar, habanero peppers, cilantro, lime juice, garlic, garlic salt, balsamic vinegar, and brown sugar together in a bowl.