The Chips and Salsa Salsa

This article marks the beginning of my fifth year writing this column. Sometimes it seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I sent in my first article about buying local meat. Other times, especially when I’m having a hard time thinking up subject matter, it seems like it’s been forever.

Coming up with stuff that I think will interest my readers and will entertain me while I’m writing is not always easy. Occasionally, the ideas come weeks in advance, but sometimes I’m struggling with subject matter at the last minute. When my Aunt Marilyn wrote me an e-mail wondering if I’d ever considered writing about Chips and Salsa (she’d been scooping up mango salsa while reading a past article of mine) I jumped at the chance to make her happy while not having to come up with an idea for this article myself. This one’s for you, Mar.

Chips and Salsa is actually a much more complicated subject than I originally imagined. Either one of the pair could be the focus of an entire article. The debate could go on and on about what makes a good dipping chip or what kind of salsa is most appropriate to eat with said chip. I decided to lean more toward the salsa side of the equation in this article because it offers more room for creativity and culinary exploration but first a few words about the chips.

Tortilla chips are ubiquitous today. You can’t go anywhere food (or gas) is sold without running into some. There are chips in red, white and blue, with flavors as diverse as run-of-the-mill sea salt to are-you-really-going-to-dip-these-in-salsa chocolate. In the natural food world (with which I’m most familiar) there are probably 50 different manufacturers of chips and hundreds of different flavors. I’m guessing you can at least quadruple those numbers if you include conventional brands.

It’s amazing to think that as recently as the 1970’s the premier corn snack was a Frito, not a Dorito. There is something so supremely addicting about tortilla chips that has contributed to their fast rise to stardom. But not all chips are created equal when it comes to the perfect dipper.

Chips for serving with salsa should be firm yet crisp and crunchy. There’s nothing worse than sinking a chip into a bowl of chunky pico de gallo and having it snap in half before you can get a big scoop of spicy tomatoes out of the dish. Chips for dip shouldn’t be flat but they also shouldn’t have some artificial molded shape. There should be a nice organic curve to them so you can pick up and hold on to more salsa. And personally, I prefer plain chips with just a hint of salt in whatever colored corn best highlights my salsa, because, when you get right down to it, the chip is just the carrier; it’s the salsa where the flavors really shine.

Salsa is a form of sauce. Both words have their origins in the Latin word sal (salt), but salsa is distinguished from other forms of sauce in several ways. Salsas are almost always based on fresh fruits and/or vegetables. I’ve seen recipes for seafood or grain-based salsa, but these are clearly outliers. They usually have some spicy heat to them. The ingredients are usually finely chopped yet they can still be easily identified within the mixture. Each ingredient’s taste, texture and color are apparent in every bite. In sauces, all the ingredients meld together to form one flavor, texture and note. In salsas, it is many flavors and textures combining in harmony to form a beautiful chord of taste.

It’s figuring out the notes in that harmonious chord where the fun of salsa making begins.

There are some key things to think about when composing. Make sure you use the freshest ingredients available. Each ingredient is going to play a role so you don’t want any of them to be flat. They should all be fresh and lively. This includes any herbs you use. Save your dried herbs for something else (and don’t even think about using dried cilantro, they shouldn’t even be allowed to sell the stuff).

If possible, cut all the ingredients to the same small size. When you scoop up your salsa, you should get some of each ingredient and you should be able to identify each as well.

Think about color and texture as well as taste when composing a salsa. If you are using red tomatoes, pick a yellow pepper to go with it instead of a red one. In a bean salsa, add some finely chopped celery or carrot to add crunch to offset the smoothness of the beans.

Most importantly, you want to make sure you have enough taste notes to make up the harmonious chord of flavor that is salsa. If you think about different types of ingredients making up different notes, this isn’t too hard.

Spicy ingredients and aromatic herbs can be considered the high notes. These are the ones that really stand out and include chilies, cilantro, ginger, and cumin.

Acidic foods such as vinegars and citrus juices are the sharps. They help enliven the mixture and also help reduce the amount of salt and sugar needed to bring out the full flavor of the mix.

Bass notes include things like beans, tomatoes, or apples. These form the foundation of the salsa, giving it body and something for the other ingredients to play off of.

With these notes in mind you could compose quick little riffs with, say, mango, ginger, lime and cayenne or roasted tomatoes, cilantro, chilies, and lime juice. You could create a symphony with beans, onions, tomatoes, chilies, garlic, honey, pineapple and scallions. Or you can be totally avant garde with a mixture of smoked salmon, sun-dried tomatoes, fennel, black pepper, cayenne, and lemon juice.

Once you get in the groove of making salsas, you might not even need those chips anymore. Your salsas will become accompaniments to your main course and you can start eating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. No more relegating them to just snack time; serve them with your eggs, use them as a sandwich spread or top your favorite meat with them.

Your mouth will sing.

Jon’s Secret Salsa

makes a big bowl of the stuff

¼ c lime juice

1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes, drained

1 15 oz. can black beans, drained and rinsed

½ c scallions, chopped

¼ c cilantro, chopped

1-2 T jalapenos, fresh or canned, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 medium avocado, diced

dash of your favorite Tequila

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Let stand 30 minutes for best flavor (if you can wait that long)

Mango Strawberry Salsa

makes 3 cups

This is not really a chip dipping salsa (although maybe this is where those chocolate flavored tortilla chips would come in handy). Serve this as an appetizer, as an accompaniment to pork or even as a dessert, topped with some whipped cream or on top of ice cream.

1 pint strawberries, stemmed and sliced

1 mango, peeled and sliced

4 t balsamic vinegar

½ c fresh orange juice

1 T Cabernet or other full bodied red wine (use the good stuff)

1 t sugar

¼ t fresh ground pepper

In a large bowl, stir together the vinegar, orange juice, red wine, sugar and pepper until the sugar dissolves. Fold in the fruit. Let rest 20 minutes before serving. Eat it fresh. It won’t keep well.

It’s Cocktail Time

All it takes is two sunny days in a row with temperatures in the 70s to start me dreaming about cocktails. Vodka and tonics in particular.

I know you can (and I do) drink cocktails all year long, but there is something special about sipping an ice-cold, refreshing beverage while laying out by the lake in the late afternoon after a hard day of yard work that a hot toddy just can’t touch.

The weather is not the only reason I’ve been daydreaming about cocktails. On a recent trip to Nelson, BC, Jon and I stumbled upon one of the most delicious concoctions I’d ever tasted. We were in the Library Bar at the Hume Hotel and the bartender was prepping some fresh mint. It smelled so wonderful that I immediately wanted a drink with mint in it, but what to have? The barman said they made a nice mojito or I could try a Koots Ginger Roots. He said it was made with gin, ginger, lime and, of course, mint. I was sold. It’s times like these I wish I had a higher alcohol tolerance because I could have drank these all night. As it was, I had two and enjoyed every sip.

Had I opted for the mojito (with rum as it’s base spirit) I would have partaken of the more historical form of the cocktail. It turns out that rum is the first American spirit and, without it, cocktails may never have been invented.

When Christopher Columbus introduced sugar cane to the New World, industrious colonists discovered how to use the molasses (a by-product of sugar production) for something tastier than molasses. Rum was born. But the British wanted a cut, so the 300-year tradition of taxing liquor began.

The colonists were so incensed by the taxes (there were three, the Molasses Act, the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act) that they founded the First Continental Congress and began the War of Independence (and you thought it was about that other beverage). Once the war was won, the US government realized there was a lot of money to be made on alcohol tax and continues to this day the idea King George started.

But rum alone does not make a cocktail. The earliest definition of a cocktail, published in 1806 in The Balance and Columbian Repository, was “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters”.

It was the bitters that set cocktails apart from the plethora of drinks that came before it. I guess possets, popes, and purls were all missing that key ingredient, as were ratafias, shrubs, turnip wines, bishops, sacks, and flips (and here I thought some of the drink names today were strange).

Bitters are a New World discovery. Native Americans taught the colonists how use herbs and plants to flavor and add medicinal properties to beverages. In return, the colonists showed Native Americans how to build stills (probably not the best trade, but that’s fodder for a different story). Combining alcohol with different types of bitter herbs resulted in a plethora of different bitters.

Initially, bitters were considered medicine (in part to avoid the above mentioned taxes) and are still used today as digestifs, but their best use was discovered sometime in the late 1700s; bitters are great at enhancing the flavor of mixed drinks.

There are hundreds of different types of bitters out there today (no, Angostura, is not the only game in town, in fact, there’s been quite a bitters revival of late). Flavoring ingredients range from foods like artichokes and orange peel to herbs like gentian and wormwood. Nowadays, a well stocked bar is expected to have a wide selection of bitters as well as spirits.

Taking a look at my two (new) favorite summertime drinks, I realized that both of them were true cocktails. The vodka and tonic contains all four key components, even if three of them are found in the tonic water. The Koots keeps its four components separate.

Today’s cocktails don’t necessarily adhere to the classic definition. They are often missing any of the three ingredients besides spirits. You could argue that a vodka martini made with just vodka and an olive is not a true cocktail, although it is only missing the sugar, since the ice lends some water to the drink and the olive does offer some bitterness.

But why argue when there are so many fabulous sounding recipes to try? There’s not enough time to quibble when there’s mixing to be done and experimentation to try. The web is filled with cocktail ideas, recipes, and how-to guides, and yes, there’s even an app to help you figure out what drinks you can make with the ingredients you have on hand.

With summertime approaching and July 4th just around the corner, let’s be patriotic and make cocktails.

Gin Hume Mint
This is my attempt at recreating the drink we had at the Hume. It’s close but not quite it. But maybe it’s because we’d not sitting on the deck of the Library Bar while someone else serves it to us. It’s still dang tasty.

½ oz simple syrup or less depending on how sweet you like your drinks (see recipe below)
2 sprigs fresh mint, separated
juice of 1 lime plus a slice for garnish
1 t coarsely grated fresh ginger
1½ oz gin (I used our local Dry Fly)
Dash of bitters (I used Angostura because it’s all I had (I definitely need to remedy that))
Ice
Club soda

In a highball glass, muddle the simple syrup, leaves from one sprig mint, lime juice, and ginger. Add the gin and bitters and stir. Add one of the mint sprigs for garnish. Fill the glass with ice then top off with club soda. Stir again and serve.

Simple Syrup
1 part water
1 part sugar

In a jar with a tight fitting lid, add sugar and water. Screw on lid and shake until all the sugar is dissolved. This takes a few minutes but is still faster than heating up the mixture and waiting for it to cool. I usually make it in ½ cup batches (½ cup sugar, ½ c water) unless I’m throwing a party where I’ll be making lots of drinks. It will keep refrigerated for several weeks.