Tomato salsa makes a great base for sauces, lasagnas and stews.

I often make tomato and zucchini salsa several times a week during harvesting season. A lot of it goes straight to the freezer, it's the perfect dish to have around on lazy days when I don't feel like cooking! The vegetables get a wonderful taste after slowly cooking them in the oven. zucchini is the perfect base for the salsa, and I actually use most of the zucchini I grow for this dish. This way, we get a lot of tomato salsa without actually having to use that many tomatoes.

What you need:
Two medium sized zucchini
A few tomatoes
Seven onions, whichever color you prefer
Cloves from two whole garlics
Olive oil
Vinegar
Honey
Salt

How to do it:
Turn your oven to 125-150 degrees Celsius (250-300 F).
Put baking paper in an oven tray with high edges (make sure the paper covers the edges as well)
Cut the tomatoes and the onions into pieces and mix them with the peeled garlic cloves in the tray.
Peel the zucchini, cut them into smaller pieces, and put into the tray.
Sprinkle a few table spoons of olive oil and honey on top.
Add a small splash of vinegar.
Add some salt.
Cook the vegetables for about 2,5 hours in the middle of the oven. Stir every now and then.

When the vegetables are baked, put them in a bowl and mix them all together with a hand blender. Let the mix cool down, and put it in the freezer.

Zucchini and onions are a two important ingredients in this mix. I use zucchini because it doesn’t add a distinct flavor, but makes the salsa richer in texture.

The tray is filled to the brim with vegetables, which all shrink a bit when they are baked in the oven.

After cooking for a few hours, the kitchen is filled with the lovely rich smells of homecooked food. Some of the fluid has evaporated and we’re left with a lot of juicy and tasty vegetables.

If you want your zucchini salsa to taste more of tomatoes, just add a few extra. They don’t have to be fully ripe. The salsa is also the perfect base for a pasta sauce or a lasagna, a minced meat sauce or a stew. You can of course also just eat it with some toast. Delicious!

The idea behind using squash is that I can make a lot of salsa without having to use that many tomatoes. You can also use peppers, chili or eggplant if you want to mix it up a bit, all depending on what you have available at the time of course.

You can use the tomato and zucchini salsa in sauces or simply eat it on a piece of bread.

I usually don’t use herbs from the beginning, I add them later when I cook so that it all blends together smoothly. Bon appetite!
/Sara Bäckmo