In the spirit of Cinco de Mayo coming up next week, here’s one of our favorite recipes for an everyday essential salsa.
We eat a lot of salsa around our camp. She Who Must Be Obeyed can’t imagine a tortilla chip without a house salsa to dip it in. Not to mention spooning over scrambled eggs, quesadillas of all sorts and sizes, tacos, tostadas, various enchiladas and even salad.
We’re part of the generation (and geography) that came of age watching Pace Picante Sauce ads on the boobtube (“get a rope”), seeing salsa offerings grow like a wildfire at the local grocery, and savoring local salsa treasures at every hole in the wall taco stand and Tex Mex joint we’ve wandered into over the years.
There are billions (really) of salsa recipes floating around out there today, with almost that many varieties of mass-produced salsa to tempt you on your next run to the grocery store.
And while we’re among those who have had at least two bottles of partially consumed salsa in every fridge we’ve owned for the past thirty years, there’s nothing quite like a workhorse salsa you can whip up at home, finely tuned for your taste buds.
We’ve come to call this one our South Fork Salsa given it’s use a few years back getting us out of a little scrape with a campground operator on the South Fork of the Snake in Idaho (another story for another day).
If viable tomatoes aren’t in season a 28-ounce can of good tomatoes will suffice here, though vine-ripened, garden-fresh tomatoes make this very nearly a religious experience. As to the rest, the spices make the day here, as do the hints of flavor from the 1/2 a celery stalk and the lime juice.
Whip a batch of this salsa up and you’ll never want to buy another jar of wanna-be-salsa again.
1 lb fresh roma tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 cup cilantro leaves and tender stems
2-4 serrano peppers, stemmed, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 to 1 medium sweet onion, roughly chopped
1/2 stalk of celery, including leaves, roughly chopped (optional)
2-4 tbsp chile powder (use the good stuff)
1/2 to 1 tsp ground cumin
1-2 tsp sugar
Kosher salt to taste
Juice from 1/2 lime, more to taste
Throw it all in a blender and puree until as smooth as you like it.
Taste for salt, chile powder, cumin and lime; adjust to suit.
Serve it up; will keep in the fridge for up to a month, but it will never last that long.
Enjoy.
