One of many benefits of living in Western Colorado is the abundance of fresh local foods, from home gardens to area farmers and cooperatives. We’re very fortunate to live in such a rich agricultural area.

With several cases of delicious Palisade peaches to “do something with” this weekend, we sectioned them into peach projects. We dehydrated some. We’re making a peach cobbler or pie or something with some. We’re freezing most of them for peach smoothies in winter. And of course, several for peach and green chili salsa for right now, as in right now. Easy and refreshing, here’s the recipe (sort of; proportions vary depending on how much we have on hand.)

INGREDIENTS

Peaches

Roasted green chili

Red onion

Corn

Lemon (or lime) juice

Cayenne pepper (or chili powder)

Fresh Cilantro

Roast, then flash freeze (easier to peel) the green chilis if fresh. If frozen, thaw. (Canned is okay if you don’t have fresh or frozen.) Dice the peeled chili. We deliberately seek out New Mexico green chilis when possible (part of my childhood roots), but local chilis are also very good!

DIRECTIONS

Dice the onion and mix it in a large bowl with the chili and corn (we used fresh Olathe sweet corn, also local; we cook a bunch, cut the kernels off the cobs and freeze them when in season so we can enjoy local corn months into the cold seasons).

Peel and cut the peaches into bite sized pieces and mix with the chili, corn, and onions. Stir in juice of one lemon or lime. (We happened to have a lemon, but no lime. Bob prefers it with lime; I prefer it with lemon. Its scrumptious either way!)

Toss with a generous pinch of cayenne pepper (or chili powder) and fresh chopped cilantro. (We grow our own cayenne, so tend to prefer that over the chili powder. To read about our cayenne-growing learning curve, see previous post “On Being Cayenne.”) Voila!

As good as it is when freshly made, tomorrow it will be even better after it settles down over night as the flavors and textures meld.

We eat it with tortilla chips, fish, chicken. Its particularly good in tacos. But my favorite way to enjoy Palisade peach ‘n green chili salsa is by itself with a spoon!

I have no idea how long it keeps in the fridge because it always gets eaten within a day or two. Oh, sometimes we add black beans or garbanzo beans for protein if we simply want to make a meal of it!

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Photos by Krystyn Hartman (c) 2019