Despite my lack of total enthusiasm with last week’s baked lemon pasta, I decided that when you fall off the horse you really should just stop being so freaked out by your kitchen and get right back up on the figurative horse, even if your ability to eat dinner that night depends on it. I even went so far as to decide that just because Ree kinda let me down a little bit with her stroganoff-y pasta recipe, that doesn’t mean that her salsa recipe won’t be any good and I should just give her one more chance to prove herself (as if she’s begging. I’m pretty sure she’s kinda doing okay on her own without me chairing the fan club).
I actually chose The Pioneer Woman salsa recipe specifically because of how the recipe stated that salsa shouldn’t necessarily be chunky like a pico de gallo and AMEN TO THAT. Sure, I coulda taken ANY recipe and pulsed/pureed/squashed it into the right consistency, but I figured, Let’s start with the recipe of someone who has the same salsa philosophy as I do.
I think salsa is such a personal thing. Is that a nutty thing to say? By the time I was done with this recipe, I had veered a little bit beyond the stated quantities – and tasted and added more of and tweaked and improvised that while it was still salsa, it was salsa almost the way I like it. I say “almost” because frankly, I got too hungry, figured it was good enough and just sat down with a bowl of it and a pile of chips bigger than my head.
For example, there are people who don’t love cilantro. They say it tastes like soap.
Soap? Really, y’all?
BUT IT’S MAGIC.
I love cilantro. I don’t love it to the extent that I’m going to garnish birthday cakes with it or incorporate it into every dish I make – but there is a definitely time and a place for cilantro and it definitely makes certain things better.
Like salsa.
I’m pretty sure I more than doubled the cilantro.
And the garlic.
And maybe added a teensy tiny bit more sugar.
And onion.
But not more jalapeño. This shizz was spicy enough.
When my grandmother died several years ago, I inherited her decades old Cuisinart food processor. Literally, that sucker was probably my age and she had used it for years. It was a lovely and wonderful addition to my kitchen while I had it. I think of it kind of like that song, “My Grandfather’s Clock” – when the clock basically stops working when the old man died. I had that food processor for maybe a month or so before it stopped working. A month of beautiful creamy cheesecakes, and finely chopped cracker crumbs. It was amazing. And then…pffffft. Stopped working.
SURE WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO HAVE A FOOD PROCESSOR LAST NIGHT FOR THIS SALSA EXPERIMENT.
Especially because I didn’t really read just how much salsa this would make.
(A lot)
No matter, my blender kinda sorta did the job okay (Hey, you like big chunks of onion, right?). Buuuuut… someday I will have a food processor again because I think they’re worth it.
The kids hated the salsa – thought it was too spicy.
Me, on the other hand? I’ll probably be eating salsa for awhile since I made a bucket of it.
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