dresese

Trejo salsa

When my friend Ben was in town, I had made a batch of "Trejo Salsa" for my friend Jay's barbecue. This is a great salsa recipe, it's definitely the best salsa I've had. It was told to me by my friend Trejo, who I met at the University of Illinois when he was a professor. He grew up in Mexico City, and lived in San Diego for a while, and I believe it was in San Diego he discovered this recipe.

There's certain recipes that you know are good just by knowing the ingredients, and this is certainly one of them. Not that the ingredients are surprising in any way, in fact they are not surprising, and that's one of the great things about it. Like beer, you can make this great salsa with the bare minimum of 4 ingredients. Here's what you need:

Tomatoes: In the late summer, use fresh ones from the farmers market. Otherwise, use canned tomatoes. Not canned roma tomatoes, but canned normal tomatoes. Definitely don't use anything with basil in it. For one batch, I usually need a little bit less then 2 24 oz cans of tomatoes.
Peppers: I usually just use six jalapenos, with one or two poblanos. If you want it hotter, use more jalapenos and less poblanos. For milder, more poblanos and less jalapenos. For really hot, throw in a habanero, or a few serranos.
Cilantro: One bunch will do.
Onion: One onion, in fact just a small part of an onion is enough.

First, roast the peppers either by putting them on a barbecue (best), or on top of a griddle, or in an oven set to broil. The point is, just more or less blacken the entire thing. You don't need 100% charred skin, but go for a majority of char at least. Next, do not peel the peppers, but just chop them up, throwing away the stem part. I use a cuisinart for this, but if you don't, just chop them very fine. Put them in a bowl.

Next, chop up your tomatoes, again throwing away the stem part of the tomatoes (there's usually no stem, but there's a hard bit where the stem once attached to). Try and get rid of as much juice as possible. What I do these days is to chop it into a bowl, then drain the bowl of all juice. If you are using a cuisinart-type food processor, just throw in big chunks, otherwise chop it finely, and put it in the bowl. You should do this with about 3/4 of your tomatoes, because you want to adjust the heat. The more tomatoes you add, the milder it will be, so put in less tomatoes at first, then add more and more tomatoes, tasting as you go, until you reach the spiciness level you like.

Next chop up about half a bunch of cilantro. Chop it finely, and put it in.

Chop an onion coarsely, but we only want about a tablespoon full of onion. Too much onion can overwhelm the salsa, we want a scattering of onion, so that not every bite will have onion in it.

Finally, add salt to taste. I find most salsas have too little salt, so don't be afraid to add enough salt so that it tastes good.

You now have what I call "Trejo salsa".

Posted by ahyatt at May 31, 2003 08:32 AM