Chef Paul’s "Cookin' with Passion" Tip of the Week
Summer Salsa
Paul O'Toole: Tip of the week to you! This is Chef Paul O'Toole, Chief Culinary Officer for all of the ForeWinds hospitality golf clubs with this week's tip.
Let's talk about one of my favorites, which is summertime salsas. Salsa is a Mexican word that means "sauce." And there are two kinds of salsa. One is a cooked salsa and one is an uncooked. The uncooked, we use the word "salsa cruda" which means "uncooked." There are many salsas, but the most popular salsas are the salsa verde, which is a green salsa, made with tomatillos, green chiles, and cilantro.
But as we go down the salsa road today, let's take a look at what we have in this summertime: an abundance of fresh vegetables and that is really what salsas are about. Salsas are all about the fresh vegetables from your garden - (or from your neighbor's garden, which is even better.) Green and red peppers, red onions or Spanish onions, scallions, chopped jalapeños ... Let's put something together here. We can make a quick salsa with something you may have in your cupboard or in your refrigerator.
You can even make grilled salsa, which is something else that not everyone thinks about. If you have the grill on, take the onions, whether it be a white onion, a Spanish onion, or a Vidalia onion, or even a red onion and let's throw them on the grill. Let's take those, brush them with a little bit of oil, dust with some pepper, put them on the grill, and do the same things with our peppers.
Split the pepper all the way in half, pull the seed pocket out of it, and brush it very lightly with oil. Not a lot, because too much oil will drip right down into the fire and then it will flare up, and then you get that black sooty flavor on your peppers. And we don't want that to happen. We want it to give a little caramelization, but we don't want that flair-up from the burning oil. So, just a little bit of oil, very, very small amount on the peppers. Put them on the fire just enough to get some grill marks on them.
Then we can take them and what we want to do with these onions and peppers is we just want to chop these up. Don't get too involved in actually measuring things out with making a salsa. Salsa is about fresh, it's about "a la minute," or "at that moment, " and it's about using fresh ingredients.
So, we are going to take some peppers - some green peppers, some red peppers and we are going to throw them on the grill. We are going to put some red onions on there. We are going to take some fresh cilantro, if we have that. This is all very inexpensive and especially in the summer time.
Now, the cilantro looks like a flat piece of parsley. It resembles parsley, but when you put it to your nose, if you just rub that sprig between your fingers, the oils from the cilantro leaf will come off and it's very distinctive aroma and flavor - so you will not mistake it for parsley.
What we want to do is to chop that cilantro, just the leaves per se. Just pick the leaves off, put that on your cutting board, and chop that up. Be cautious when using the cilantro. Some people love the taste of cilantro and a little bit is great and a little too much is too much. Just be wary of that, add a little bit at a time and if you say, "wow, that tastes great!," then you can always add more.
We are going to put this all into a mixing bowl. Take our peppers, our onions, our cilantro, we are going to chop that and put that there. If you really want to kick it up a little bit, put in some jalapeños in there, or chipotle peppers. The chipotle is a smoked jalapeño. Sometimes it comes packed in small jars in adobo sauce. That's a tomato-based and that the smoked jalapeños come in and they are very tasty.
This changes the whole flavor profile, if you put this in your salsa. You don't need a lot, these are pretty spicy, I forewarn you. We are going to take some oil, some chopped garlic, and diced tomatoes. Let's put one cup of chopped tomatoes in there, or if you have a couple of tomatoes more that you like to throw in there, put them in. And by all means, if you have cucumbers, which are very inexpensive and easy to grow in the summertime, let's throw those cucumbers in there. Peel the cucumber, split it in half, take the seeds out, and chop the cucumbers into half-inch squares. Put that into our mix too.
Let's say we are mixing up a batch. We are going to make this batch last. Today we are going to have half a red pepper, half a green pepper, half an onion, two stalks of a scallion and chop that up. Let's also take a teaspoon of chopped jalapeños and maybe four ounces of oil. Let's put in also two teaspoons of chopped garlic and some red wine vinegar. Take two ounces of red wine vinegar, half a teaspoon of ground cumin, and half a teaspoon of chili powder. Mix all that up together.
What will happen here is as we let this sit for a little bit, all these flavors will start to marry. It's very important that when you make a salsa, that you don't turn around and try it right away. Let is sit for a half a day at least and then taste it. If you need a little bit of salt, use a pinch of kosher salt, maybe half a teaspoon. Maybe if you like it a little spicier than that and if the jalapeños were not enough for you, put a little bit of white pepper in there. You might want to use a real small amount, maybe an eighth of a teaspoon of white pepper, and that will really kick it up for you also.
Salsa just means "sauce." There is no set salsa, you can improvise. At one of our restaurants, we make a great chipotle-peach salsa. I use that when I am grilling pork tenderloins, a chipotle-peach salsa from fresh summer peaches. We'll talk about that on a future episode.
I hope you try the salsa. It is easy, don't get too hung up on it. It means "sauce" and it means fresh. Let's make them and enjoy them. Thanks.
That's my tip of the week. I am here to make certain that your dining experience at any ForeWinds golf club is a "wow!" Come out and taste the difference for yourself. This is Chef Paul promising to deliver HospitalityPlus on every visit.
