NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Sun, 25 Dec 2005
Merry Christmas!
I have a gift for ya!
I've been working on a fresh Tex-Mex salsa
recipe, tweaking it for, well, literally months. It's pretty good now,
and I think that it's time to release it into the wild and let it
evolve. All I ask is that if you improve it, shoot me back the
changes!
Here you go:
Best, Easiest Hot Salsa Fresca Ever (In My Kitchen,
Anyway)
800g fresh *ripe* tomatoes, seeded. (Cut in half horizontally and
squeeze to seed. Romas work great.)
400g fresh yellow onion
80 g fresh jalapeno peppers, seeded
20 g fresh garlic cloves
20 g fresh cilantro, leaves only; avoid stalks if you can, they're bitter.
10 g celery stalk (Yup, celery. Just a bit. It brings out the garden
in everything else.)
1 tbsp Kosher salt (Or regular. Whatever. Non-iodized.)
1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp sugar
Juice of one large lime (...Or two medium...)
Mince and mix it all together with a cake mixer, blender, or
food-processor. These portions make about a liter/quart & a half.
Notes:
- I use metric here 'cause I have a digital kitchen
scale (15 bucks at Target when on sale) that reads in fractions when in
Averdupois mode (...and I incidentally maintain that any
measuring system that can express something in "furlong-stones per
fortnight" is antiquated at this late date. :) But you'll note that the
recipe is pretty geometric. (1, 1/2, 1/10th, 1/40th, 1/80th.) 800
grams of tomatoes is about 1.75 lbs, and seeds will account for about
20% of the weight (I think.) Or try it measuring by volume, I bet it'd
be fine. It's not super critical.
-
If you chop the tomatoes first and immediately mix in the lime juice,
it'll retain its color well. Taste isn't affected in any case, but it
will darken a bit without the prompt anti-oxidation of the lime juice.
-
Also, note that a lot of the heat in this sauce comes from the
garlic. Raw garlic is "bottom of the tongue" spicy, and hotter than
you think; capsaicin in the jalapenos is "top of the tongue" hot. Play
w/ the ratio between the two to adjust the heat to your liking. As
written, this is a pretty hot salsa, assuming that you use real
jalapenos and not those big "Caucasian grade" peppers you
occasionally see these days. Serranos work too, for that matter, but
they're more firey and less flavorful in my opinion. Play with
it. There aren't any rules here.
Now grab a bath towel, a gallon of iced tea & some chips and commence
to eating. You'll need the bath towel. Fridge it overnight for a more
definite garlic/cilantro flavor.
-=-
Bonus recipe: get a pound of sirloin tips, brown, cover with this
salsa, and lightly simmer for a couple or three hours for a great
Carne Guisada.
-=-
Bonus secret discovered over the course of this process: capsaicin is
fat soluble, not water soluble. If you coat your hands lightly with
olive or cooking oil, you can wash it off with detergent and have much
less worry about the "rub the eye (or worse) with the jalapeno hand" effect.
Enjoy, friends; let me know if you improve upon it.
And a very, very Happy New Year to You and Yours!
[Addendum: in response to overwhelming demand
for.... well okay, one perplexed email, it's my understanding that the
heat in garlic comes from sulphuric acid, and it affects every cell that it
touches. Hence the "bottom of the tongue" turn-o-phrase. It's a
remarkable effect when noted. Capsaicin, on the other hand, attaches
to fat cells in your taste buds, which are pretty much on top, and is
hard to dislodge - that's where its heat comes from. If you need to
recover from a nuclear taco, swishing around buttermilk works way, way
better than water or beer.
<*clink*> To Science!]
[Another addendum: I simplified this and improved it a few
months later.]
Posted at 23:45 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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