This salsa is a basic sauce that can be used for just about anything you’d use a rich, tomato-based sauce for. In Maltese cooking, it’s most often slathered on top of fried fish.
If you grow your own tomatoes, this is a perfect recipe to use up all those fresh tomatoes. This recipe is for a deliberately large batch, as salsa freezes well. Freeze it in takeaway containers, and you’ve got salsa on hand for months.
You can also add fried red and green capsicum to make Bzar biz-zalza, very similar to a Sicilian peperonata. It’s also very similar to the Sicilian pesto alla Trapanese. All you need to do is add some coarsely ground almonds and you’ve got a perfect summer pasta dish.
Ingredients:
- 1 kg of ripe tomatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
- 2 tbsp of capers
- 1 small chopped red chilli
- 3/4 cup of chopped parsley
- 1/2 cup of fresh marjoram (use less, to taste, if dried)
- 1/2 cup of basil leaves
- 1/2 cup of mint
- 4 cloves of garlic, sliced
- 1 cup of red wine
- Salt and pepper to taste
Optional:
- 3 red capsicums
- 3 green capsicums
Method:
Cook the tomatoes over low-to-medium heat until they begin to break down.
If you have a pestle and mortar, you can pound the basil leaves with the garlic and a pinch of salt until they’re almost a paste. Otherwise, just shred the basil leaves rather than chop. Roughly chop the parsley and mint.
Add the herbs and other ingredients apart from the wine to the pot of tomatoes and cook until all softened.
Add the wine and simmer gently until the liquid reduces to a good, thickened sauce. At least an hour, even longer. The longer it simmers, the richer the flavour will be.
To make Bzar biz-zalza, peppers in tomato sauce Maltese style, first de-seed and slice the capsicum, then fry them in olive oil for about five minutes. From there, follow the recipe as above.
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