This Fresh Cherry Salsa is sweet but savoury, spicy but fruity. Serve with goat cheese or whipped feta cheese as an appetizer, or with fish, chicken or chips!
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Fresh Cherry Salsa is a must-try! With only five ingredients, it’s quick and easy to chop, combine and serve. I served this two ways recently: once as a fresh fruity appetizer with goat cheese and rice crackers and again as a crostini topping with the same whipped feta cheese used in this Strawberry Whipped Feta Crostini. It’s naturally sweet with a little heat, and both times was enthusiastically devoured!
This fresh cherry salsa recipe was inspired by an appetizer served at my last Book Club meeting. The hostess, who is a fabulous cook, made a simple sauce with fresh raspberries and drizzled it over a log of soft goat cheese. While I pretended to be paying close attention to the finer details of the book discussion, my mind was elsewhere, dreaming up possible variations of this simple but superb appetizer. It was so pretty! Red berries on white goat cheese, just waiting to be scooped and savoured. So I did. Several times.
And then it came to me: cherries! Replace the raspberries with cherries and add some savoury ingredients. Fresh cherry salsa on goat cheese! Cherries are abundant now. I like to make sure we have our fill of fresh ones every year at this time. Using basic salsa ingredients, I combined them with red onion, cilantro, jalapeño peppers and lime juice. We were surprised at just how incredibly good this salsa was!
This salsa is sweet but savoury, spicy but fruity. While it’s particularly good with cheese, it’s one I’ll make again and again to serve with fish, chicken or chips. I know I’ll want to serve it as a winter holiday appetizer using either preserved or frozen cherries, too. Look at those festive holiday colours!
So if you spot cherries in your local market, snap them up, have your fill, and save a few to make this Cherry Salsa Goat Cheese Appetizer.
This Fresh Cherry Salsa is sweet but savoury, spicy but refreshing. Serve with goat cheese or whipped feta cheese as an appetizer, or serve alongside fish, chicken or with chips!
- 2 cups fresh cherries, pitted and roughly chopped
- 1/4 cup finely chopped red onion
- 1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
- 1 medium jalapeño, minced
- 2 tbsp lime juice freshly squeezed
- 8 oz log soft goat cheese
Combine first five ingredients in a medium bowl. Spoon over top of a log of goat cheese and serve with crackers.
The photo shows 1 cup of prepared salsa on a 4 oz. log of goat cheese.
Love salsa as much as I do?
I’m really hoping our local cherries will be in at Farmer’s Market tomorrow so I can try this out!
We’ve been eating this all week! So good!
This looks amazing! I just love cherries but have never used them in a savoury dish.
Usually we jut gobble them up, but this time I set some aside to make this salsa. So glad I did!
I love sour cherries, I just used it in a dessert but I like the idea of using it as an appetizer.
Using cherries in a savoury recipe was something new for me too. Loved it!