Blueberry Salsa

Is there anything better than smoked chicken salads as the weather starts to warm? Perhaps it can only be bettered by adding a delicious blueberry salsa. I've just rediscovered this recipe. I used to make it years ago, in those halcyon days before children I suspect. The blueberries in the past few weeks have been sensational, wonderfully sweet, and I began reminiscing.

This recipe is from one of Donna Hay's earliest books- At My Table, which has been out of print for some time I believe. I remember this book was the first time I discovered Donna Hay. I bought it when I was seconded to Albury in my intern year in 1998, oh so long ago. It has stacks of great recipes, lots of which I used to make. And lots of the recipes fit perfectly into the low GI lifestyle.

It's quick, ever so simple and tastes fab. And it gives you an excuse to have some extra mango lying about the house- never a bad thing, even if you've done too good a job at encouraging your child to like mango, and he becomes stiff competition for leftover mango.

Blueberry Salsa

250gm (8oz) blueberries
1/2 mango, chopped
1/2 red onion, chopped
1 tblsp (20mL) soft brown sugar
3 tblsp (60mL) raspberry vinegar

Place the blueberries, mango, onion, sugar and vinegar in a bowl and mix to combine.

Notes
The smoked chicken from Woolies is wonderful. The smoked chicken from the Masterchef supermarket sucks.

Balsamic Tomato Salsa

This was Absolutely Fantastic. I'll be making this again and again. My favourite kind of food to cook at home, wether I'm on a low GI diet or not. Ridiculously easy to make, and tastes glorious. I'm already thinking of different ways to use it. It would be great with salmon or lamb. You could adapt it to make a delicious pasta sauce, use it as a sandwich/wrap filling. It would have been nice with some shaved parmesan added on top.

The recipe was from the Sunday Telegraph Body + Soul last week (17/10/10), and reprinted from the October issue of Good Taste. The recipe as presented was for Chicken with Silverbeet and Balsamic Tomato Salsa, which would have been all low GI. Making it for a 9 year old as well as myself I didn't risk the silverbeet and chickpea combo (even though he likes chickpeas), instead using some pasta and vegies.

Balsamic Tomato Salsa

200gm punnet grape tomatoes, halved
1tbsp balsamic vinegar
Sea salt, ground pepper
2 tblsp pine nuts
1 tblsp snipped fresh chives

Heat oven to 190C. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Place tomato, cut side up, on tray. Drizzle over vinegar. Season to taste. Bake for 5 minutes. Add pine nuts and bake for 4-5 minutes or until tomato collapses and pine nuts are toasted. Transfer tomato, pine nuts and pan juices to a bowl. Add chives and toss to combine.

Notes
Because I was making this for a child to eat, I only used about 2/3 of the balsamic vinegar (he didn't like it anyway, but did eat some). The child of course had a higher ratio of pasta on his plate- bribery is everything. He decided that he almost liked the pine nuts so that's a win.
It took much longer than 9-10 minutes in my oven (everything always does, I suspect it's the oven)
We had mashed kumara, with the cauliflower and asparagus.
I was hoping to use grape kumatoes (or tomaccoes as Mr Adventures refers to them) but of course there was none at the shops yesterday.