Happy 4th of July!

Happy Independence Day, everyone!  I hope you all have something fun planned and something delicious to eat, as I declare today to be independent of calories!  (Uh, not for real, but see what I did there?)  Anyway, we are celebrating our holiday with close family friends and a cookout, likely to be comprised of hamburgers, hot dogs and...chips and salsa.  Yes.  Chips and salsa - that quintessential American snack food.  What's that you say?  Salsa isn't technically from America?  True, but it is delicious and I have been making it from scratch since I was  a teenager.  Our Fourth of July table (hell, any holiday or festive table, really) just isn't the same without some homemade salsa. 

Now, I am not going to claim that my salsa is the best salsa anywhere, but it is tasty and, like my pancake recipe, it was originally inspired by someone else's version.  I have experimented and experimented with my recipe for years (probably something like 16 or 17 years....geez, am I THAT old?)  and I have my own recipe down to an *almost* science.  I can make this stuff in my sleep.  (That isn't an exaggeration - I could make this stuff in my sleep, but it would be dangerous for a number of reasons.  Obviously.)  I actually make two different versions - a red salsa that has evolved into a mix of true salsa roja and a pico de gallo (I will explain that in a minute) and a green salsa that varies from a traditional roasted salsa verde to a fresh tomatillo-avocado salsa (today's version). 

The original version of the salsa roja (red or tomato based salsa) dates back to a slumber party I went to as a teenager.  My friend's dad (I think) made a delicious salsa that began with roasted beefsteak tomatoes, white onions, fresh jalapenos and distilled white vinegar.  This was all pureed together to make a tangy, spicy, pungent sauce that I devoured, then politely demanded the recipe.  This was back in the days, waaaayyyy before culinary school, when I was best known for my infamous ability to burn everything, particularly beef that I was supposed to be browning, on the stove top.  (My poor mother, seriously.  The woman was working and trying to raise three teenagers on her own and I couldn't even be bothered to start dinner cooking so she could finish it when she got home.  Sorry, Mom.)  Anyway, I am not sure what my mom thought when I announced that I was going to "make" salsa ('cause in those days, our "salsa" came out of a yellow jar from a company that rhymes with "space" and it sure wasn't called salsa.  "Get a rope!")  To her credit, she let me "create" and, that folks, was just the beginning.  Salsa became my signature party food and, as the years went on, I tried more and more variations on that theme.  I am super persnickety about salsa (both mine and others')so much so that, if we try a new Mexican food restaurant and I don't like the *free* salsa, we just won't ever go back. 

At one point, my favorite restaurant was a local chain that was kind of upscale Tex-Mex which, when most joints plunked a tiny bowl of red salsa on the table as pre-appetizer, would serve both red AND green salsa with unlimited chips.  Awesome.  I took note and sought to re-create salsas that looked and tasted like theirs.  Their red sauce had diced, fresh tomatoes and sliced green onions mixed into the salsa, so I appropriated that idea for mine.  Their green sauce was the deep olive green of roasted tomatillos, with diced white onion and more sliced green onions, so I appropriated that idea as well (though the green version I made today was quite different).  My salsa became like most of my cooking - a hodge-podge of an original food inspiration and other ideas and techniques that I collected along the way. 

Today's red began with a chunky puree of cored and seeded roma tomatoes, stemmed and seeded jalapenos and serranos, the juice of a couple of limes and a bunch of cilantro.  I diced two cored and seeded tomatoes, sliced a bunch of green onions and added salt and pepper to taste, then mixed the puree with the "pico de gallo".  Recheck for seasoning and: viola!  Today's green began with fresh tomatillos, green onions, stemmed and seeded jalapenos and serranos, the juice of a couple of limes,  and a bunch of cilantro, pureed until mostly smooth.  I then added three avocados, seasoned with salt and pepper and pureed until it was as smooth as my blender could make it.  Recheck for seasoning and: viola!  Happy, happy 4th of July!  Be safe, eat well and try not to set a piece of our great nation ablaze!