I still make salsa the same basic way I have for almost ten years - I combine fresh and cooked ingredients, because what I want in salsa is a texture that'll stick to chips.

Diced onions and chiles cooked in just a little oil, with tomato puree and salt added - cooked until it's thick. In this case I added a little cucumber juice, because I happened to have extra, which is the subject of another post. If you want a more elegant salsa, you can strain the tomato puree; I usually don't.

Meanwhile, fresh corn kernels just off the cob, chopped fresh tomato, fresh culantro, and fresh Texas tarragon, are tossed together in a jar.

The tomato puree is added to the fresh ingredients, and the head softens the fresh ingredients just enough, while thickening the whole mix.




Served here with Fritos, and homemade macaroni and cheese.

200th post!

We had tacos with the Golden Globes Sunday night, and the salsa - which started out simply as "well, this is what I got at Market Basket, what can I do with it?" - was so good that I've been trying to find other things to do with it for the rest of the week. (The tacos themselves were centered around pork belly, which was cured with chili con carne seasoning, simmered to soften the skin, smoked, and then cubed and deep-fried before being put on warm pita - in lieu of flour tortillas - smeared with the salsa and some monterey jack cheese.)

Fry up one onion, chopped, until it starts to soften; add a large amount of garlic (20 cloves or so) and continue to fry until the garlic gets some color; add five medium to large tomatilloes, a little Mexican oregano, a little chile pepper (I used dried jalapeno), and just enough water for it to all simmer in until the garlic is soft. If you have cilantro roots, add them at the simmering stage.

Puree everything until as smooth as possible, put back in the pot, and cook down until thick - not quite as thick as tomato paste, but certainly as thick or thicker as jarred salsa.

Puree again, this time adding the leaves from one large bunch of cilantro, and the flesh of one ripe avocado. The cilantro will be the bulk of the volume, so with an immersion blender it will take a fair bit of blending to get the sauce smooth - with a Cuisinart you'll be scraping the sides of the bowl a lot.

Season with a bit of salt and a lime's worth of juice.

It may sound like salsa verde mixed with guacamole, but the cilantro and garlic are really the focus - everything else is in a supporting role.

What I want from salsa is good fresh flavor, a little bite, and for it to stick to a tortilla chip instead of forcing me to use one as a spoon.  The way I get that is by using both cooked and fresh tomatoes, which is why I usually only make homemade salsa -- for chips and salsa, anyway -- in the summer.

This particular salsa takes half of the tomatoes, by volume, and dices them; the other half is roasted in the oven, peeled, pureed, and strained to get the seeds out.  If you leave the skin on and proceed to puree and strain, you'll get a more noticeably roasted flavor -- I did that with some of the tomato puree I've frozen for the long tomato-less year.

While the tomatoes are roasting, the diced tomatoes are combined in a bowl with diced chiles (cherry bomb peppers and cayenne in this case), diced onion, a little garlic, a little Cuban oregano (it's more similar to Mexican oregano than Italian oregano, though it is a third plant altogether), and a little salt.  That's it, you're done (though it will taste much better after a night in the fridge).  Easy as pie.  The puree, thickened by roasting, binds the fresh ingredients together and gives you chip-stick-ability.

Sometimes I add an acid like lemon or lime juice.  I never add vinegar, though I know many people do.  I think the combination of tomato puree, vinegar, and corn syrup in so many commercial salsas has a lot to do with why it's been outselling ketchup for almost twenty years -- it brings the products closer together.  I want the thickness, but not ketchup-like qualities.

I add diced cucumber to salsa pretty often, but didn't in this case because it's a fairly large bowl of salsa, and if cucumbers sit in an acidic medium too long, they'll begin to pickle.  I'll add cucumbers to this when I have little enough left that I know I'll use it up in a day or two.  Also, the spicier your salsa, the better a combination the cucumbers will make.