Recipe Corner: Salsa Verde and Pico de Gallo

Here are the basic formulas we use when making Pico de Gallo and Salsa Verde. These are Texas-style recipes. We use these as dips or in our cooking.

Green Sauce (Salsa Verde)

tomatillos
serrano chile peppers
onion
fresh cilantro leaves
chopped garlic (optional)

The basic ratio is 2 tomatillos per serrano chile pepper, though we sometimes use up to a 1:1 ratio when we want a very spicy sauce. Use 1 small to medium onion for every 8-12 tomatillos. Use a handful of cilantro and maybe a clove or two of garlic.

Put the tomatillos, chiles, and onion in a pot of water. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 10-20 minutes. We don't always pre-cook the onion and chiles. Sometimes we use them raw.

Dehusk and destem the tomatillos and peppers. Peel the onion and cut it into a few chunks.

Throw everything into a blender or food processor. Add a handful of cilantro leaves and a bit of cooking water. Puree until it's the consistency you like.

Season with garlic (garlic powder works fine), salt, and pepper.

Variations: Add oil, rice wine vinegar, jalapenos, chicken broth, etc. I also like to mix the salsa verde with yogurt (or sour cream or creme fraiche).

This keeps well in the refrigerator for a few days.

Pico de Gallo

Use the following ingredients in whatever quantities that seem good to you. Chop, mix, and let sit before eating. This will keep for a few days in the refrigerator, though I think it's best the day it's made.

tomatoes
serrano chile peppers (or whatever other chiles you prefer)
cilantro
onion
lime juice
garlic powder or chopped fresh garlic
salt/pepper

Can you hold up 2000 times your own weight?

Ian (and I) built a bridge from a bag of 75 popsicle sticks and plain white Elmer's glue as part of the Engineering Badge for Cub Scouts. Last night, his den's bridges were all tested to the breaking point. Ian's bridge weighed 3.1 ounces and held 405 pounds before breaking. That's an efficiency of 2090 (meaning the bridge held more than 2000 times its own weight)! The next best bridge held 280 pounds.

I took a high-speed video using an LG Dare cell phone. Here are the last 30 seconds showing the last weight being added, the Big Break, and Ian's reaction (that's him in the white T-shirt directly behind the bridge). It looks like the diagonal I-Beam closest to the camera detached from the bottom tension member.

Recipe Corner: Short-cut Blender Margaritas

Quickly-made pseudo-margaritas, much better than anything made from that abomination that goes by the name of margarita mix.

You need to have the following staples on hand:

frozen limeade concentrate
tequila
triple-sec (other orange-flavored liqueurs probably work, too)
kosher salt (optional)
water and ice (and a way to achieve crushed ice)

Put the following into the blender container:

1 part triple-sec (about 1/4 cup)
2 parts limeade concentrate (about 1/2 cup)
3 parts tequila (about 3/4 cup)

Add crushed ice and maybe a little water (to reduce the limeade concentrate to the recommended dilution, which is about 4 parts H2O to 1 part concentrate). This will be about right to make 40 ounces in the blender.

Run the blender.

Dip the rims of the serving glasses into the full blender, just far enough to get the rims wet. Then dip the rims into a small pile of kosher salt, held in your hand, to salt the rims of the glasses.

Pour the margaritas. Garnish further if that' s your desire. Drink up.

Ice Cream Follies

Last night's experiment in ice-cream making was not an unqualified success.

We started with the peach ice cream recipe in the Moosewood dessert cookbook. It's more of a sorbet recipe, but it looked good.

It called for 3 cups of pureed peaches, one to one-and-a-half cups of sugar, a cup of peach juice, a cup of half-and-half, and a bit of vanilla. The yield is about a quart. Sounds good so far.

We found a bag of frozen peaches in the freezer, but it was only 2 cups. So we added some frozen plums we found next to the peaches. We had no peach juice, so we substituted orange juice.

The mixture seemed like way more than would fit in the machine. I guess that makes sense when you think about it -- 3 cups of fruit and 2 cups of liquid and a bunch of sugar is by definition more than a quart. That was easy enough to deal with. We did most of the batch, transferred it to the freezer, then did the rest of the mixture and blended it with the first batch. Since the fruit came from the freezer, it was very cold and all of it became ice cream easily.

The big surprise came when we tasted it. We have re-created the flavor of children's chewable aspirin! I suppose it's an orangesicle flavor. The kids didn't really notice, since they've only had the liquid stuff. For the adults, it was quite disconcerting. I think we'll cross this flavor off of our make-again list.