Tropical Fruit Salsa

So the other day I threw together some really fine fruit salsa--I love the combination of heat and sweet. This is excellent for those fish tacos or just to dress any pan fried, steamed or poached white fish. It will knock your socks off, guaranteed. I tell ya, I ran out of fish for my tacos and just had a fruit salsa taco (corn tortillas of course) and it was dynamite.

Don't sweat it on the measurements; this recipe ain't rocket science (or baking either).

Tropical Fruit Salsa

1 medium tomato, diced

1 small mango, peeled and diced

5 slices pineapple, peeled, cored and diced

1/2 med. purple onion, chopped fine

1 fresh jalapeño, chopped fine (or less, or you can leave this out altogether if you like)

handful of cilantro, chopped medium or fine (your choice)

juice of one lime

Assemble ingredients. Other firm fleshed tropical fruits can be added or substituted for the pineapple. Stir together everything and refrigerate for an hour or two before serving. Will keep refrigerated for several days, but beware! It gets hotter as it ages. Serves 6-8. 

White chocolate & macadamia nut scones

Trying to catch up on my posts and I've promised to post this recipe for a while. The basic scone recipe came with a scone pan that I ordered from the King Arthur's Flour baking catalog http://www.kingarthurflour.com. If you haven't checked them out, you should! They have the highest quality baking supplies, including many hard to find items. Anyway, I've played around with the recipe for a year now and here's what I've come up with. I think its pretty perfect--I won't be messing with this one any more!

2 3/4 (12.5 oz) A.P. flour
1/3 c. regular white sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. fresh baking powder
1/2 c. (1 stick) cold, sweet butter
3/4-1 c. chopped macadamia nuts (or other nuts or dried fruit)
4 oz. bar Ghirardelli white chocolate, coursely chopped
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 c. milk, buttermilk or 1/2 & 1/2
1/2-3/4 c. demerrara or other large grained sugar for topping

Preheat oven to 425F. Grease the scone pan or a cookie sheet. In large bowl, whisk together all dry ingredients except the large grained sugar. Cut in the cold butter with a pastry blender or 2 knives until barely crumbly. The crumbles should be about the size of peas and should NOT be uniform. Overworking the dough is more of a sin than underworking it! And nuts/fruit and chocolate and mix briefly. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs, milk and vanilla. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix just until evenly moistened. Scoop batter into scone pan or onto cookie sheet. Sprinkle liberally with the demerrara sugar (I go for solid sugar coverage which looks like a lot but when the scones rise during baking the sugar is spread out). Bake for 15 minutes or until scones are golden. Remove and let cool 5 minutes before removing from the pan. Be sure to enjoy while they're still warm and the chocolate is still melty!