PICO DE GALLO

• portioner: 3 Cups

Ingredienser

2 ripe medium tomatoes, cored and diced

½ small red onion, diced

½ small white onion, diced

2 jalapeños, halved, seeds and ribs removed, diced

¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro

Juice of 1 lime

1 tablespoon pure olive oil

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Vejledning

Add the tomatoes, onions, jalapeños, cilantro, lime juice, olive oil, and salt to a medium bowl and mix well. Now taste it. Does it need more salt or acid? If so, add a pinch or two of salt (add a little at first—you can always add more, but you can’t take it away) or a squeeze of lime juice. When it tastes the way you want it to, you’re done.

Notater

You don’t even need to know how to cook to make this salsa. All you need to know is how to chop (sure, you could use a machete, but a sharp chef’s knife is better!). If you’re going to buy store-bought sauces and salsas to substitute in some of the dishes in this book, I won’t be mad. But once you make fresh pico de gallo—a simple combination of chopped ripe tomatoes, cilantro, onion, jalapeño, and fresh lime juice—the prepared stuff at the supermarket will be a letdown.

In the restaurant we go through hundreds of gallons of pico de gallo a week. Pico is the quintessential Mexican condiment that goes with everything on our menu and that you should put on regular rotation in your household: put it on eggs with some hot sauce in the morning, serve it with simple rice and beans, or top a piece of seared fish.

While we give measurements here, they’re honestly just a suggestion; any good abuela or taquero would make it their own. Once you’ve made this a few times, you won’t even need to use a recipe anymore. The point is you want mostly tomatoes, fewer onions, less cilantro, and a hit of chile, lime, and salt. Play with the amounts and make it the way you want—if you want even coverage of your chips and tacos, chop everything into a meticulous quarter-inch dice. If you’re in a rush, go bigger. There are no strict rules.

FINDING JUICY TOMATOES

Farmer’s markets in L.A. are a thing of beauty, and just about every neighborhood has one, from Santa Monica, where the chefs hang out, to Hollywood, where the celebrities buy their kale.

In California we’re spoiled with beautiful weather year-round that helps bring forward the juiciest and sweetest tomatoes on the planet. Pretty much anywhere else in the country, unless it’s the middle of summer, finding a perfect tomato is a problem. In the fall and winter the big red tomatoes at the supermarket can be bland and mealy; Romas can be pithy and firm. We’ve found that cherry tomatoes or those vine-ripened tomatoes still on the stems are pretty reliable for making pico de gallo and other salsas.

COMBINING ONION VARIETIES

This recipe calls for both red and white onions because they each bring a different flavor to the salsa, red being sweeter and milder, white being more pungent. The two different colors make the salsa look prettier, too. But don’t sweat it if you only have one type of onion. It’ll still be delicious.