Salsa

Tomatoes, chillies and garlic charred dry on the griddle until blackened in patches, then blended with their skins on.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 600 g ripe tomatoes
• 3 serrano chillies, or 2 jalapeños for something milder
• 3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
• ½ small white onion, in one thick slice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• a squeeze of lime

Method

1. THE VEGETABLES ARE CHARRED DRY ON THE COMAL BEFORE ANYTHING IS BLENDED, and that char is the flavour of the sauce rather than a step on the way to it. Whole tomatoes, whole chillies, unpeeled garlic and a slab of onion go onto a dry griddle over a high heat and are left alone until the undersides go black in patches, then turned, and turned again, for fifteen or twenty minutes in all. The skins blister and split, the sugars in the tomato catch and caramelise, and the garlic steams inside its own papers. The same ingredients blended raw make a thin, sharp, bright-red sauce that tastes of raw tomato; charred first, it is dark, thick and faintly smoky.
2. NOTHING IS PEELED AND THAT IS DELIBERATE. The blackened tomato skin goes into the blender with the flesh and is most of why the sauce is the colour it is. Only the garlic's papery outer skin comes off, because it burns to ash rather than blackening.
3. IT IS PULSED AND NOT PURÉED. Six or eight short bursts leaves it loose and slightly coarse, with flecks of skin visible. Run smooth for a minute it goes pale, frothy and oddly thick, because the blades whip air into it, and the colour never comes back.
4. THE CHILLIES GO IN WHOLE AND THE HEAT IS JUDGED AFTERWARDS. Charred whole, stalks and seeds and all, then two of the three blended in first and the sauce tasted before the third goes near it. Chilli heat varies enormously between fruit from the same plant, and a sauce made too hot cannot be made less so.
5. IT IS SALTED WARM AND TASTED COLD. Warm sauce reads saltier than it will be on the table. Seasoned to taste straight out of the blender it is reliably under-salted an hour later, so it is seasoned, cooled, and seasoned again.
6. A griddle or heavy frying pan set over a high heat, DRY.
7. The tomatoes, chillies, unpeeled garlic and the slice of onion laid on and left undisturbed 5 minutes, until BLACKENED in patches underneath.
8. Turned and charred again, and again, 15 to 20 MINUTES in all. The garlic taken out after about 8 minutes, before it burns.
9. The garlic squeezed out of its papers; everything else goes in UNPEELED, blackened skins and all.
10. Tomatoes, onion, garlic and TWO of the chillies put in a blender with the salt.
11. PULSED 6 to 8 short bursts to a loose, slightly coarse sauce. Not run smooth.
12. TASTED. The third chilli added and pulsed in only if it needs more heat.
13. Cooled, then tasted again and the salt and lime corrected. It will want more salt than it did warm.
14. Keeps 5 days in the fridge and is better on the second.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Mexico · All recipes