Gimme Salsa, Now!

I live on the East Coast of North America and summer seems to have hit us literally overnight. And though I am prone to making salsa all year, warmer weather and salsa go hand in hand and the sudden heatwave we're currently experiencing just cried out for fresh salsa.

My typical way of making salsa is in a blender then simmering stovetop, but this time around I thought I would pay homage to an old school traditional way of preparing it so I put the blender away and pulled out my mortar and pestle. The traditional mortars or molcajetes used for thousands of years in Latin America are made from a single chunk of volcanic rock and have a somewhat rough interior. It's the type my Grandma used to work with and anytime my cooking conjures up childhood memories of her in the kitchen I feel truly blessed and savor those moments. My mortar is granite and I would love to get one made of lava rock, but for now, this will do.

Salsa 1000 Ways

I've made salsas hundreds of times and I bet I've never done one exactly the same. I generally use the same ingredients, but the chilis always have a different heat index, and I use different combinations of chilis. What I always aim for is balance. Not too much tomato, not too many onions and not so hot that my head explodes. Mine usually end up more on the mild side.

_{^{ROASTED TOMATOS AND GARLIC}}
For this batch I roasted four tomatos (only used 2 1/2). Drizzled with olive oil and threw in 7 or 8 cloves of garlic to roast along side them. Roasting at 350° for about 40 minutes, turning once. They should be tender and eager to release their yummy juices and the garlic will easily smash into a soft paste once removed from their skins.

_{^{READY FOR SOME ELBOW GREASE!}}

Smashing Time!

I don't want to belabour this process because it is very basic and simple. For this batch of salsa the proportions were:

• Tomatos - 2 1/2 Medium Roma (others reserved for something else)
• Jalapeño - 2
• Poblano Pepper - 1
• White Onion - 1/4 medium
• Garlic - 8 cloves
• Tomatillo - 1 large
• Salt to taste and a squeeze of lime juice

Roast your chilies stovetop, remove the skins and seeds, rough chop them. Sauté onions. I put in a sprinkling of oregano to them and also roasted one tomatillo for tang. Now the fun part, smash the heck out of it!

_{^{THICK AND RUSTIC.}}

I put a good amount of elbow grease into my salsa and could have kept going, but I was enjoying this really chunky appearance and stopped there. The finished product was wonderfully smokey from the roasting and the chilis in this batch were unusually mild which I'd rather have than it being too hot, so I was happy and I think my Grandma would have been too.

Oh, I'm going to have to give a shout out to Hive account@pamcooks because I couldn't help thinking of her while I was writing this. She just posted an interesting recipe and spoke a bit about her Grandma and how she thought of her while she cooked. It is a wonderful feeling for me to think of mine when I cook, so it was very cool to read her post this morning.