Scrubbing Tomatillos

Peeling and Scrubbing the Tomatoes

This Monday I approached a girl who is in my Spanish and my Religion class here at BYU and asked her if she had any skills that she could teach me.  She replied - How about I teach you how to play ukulele? (completely random) And I answered her - Actually I already know how to play it. (even more random)  So she said well how about i teach you to cook salsa verde then.  I LOVE salsa verde so I was pretty excited that she knew how and was willing to teach me because i'm not super great in the kitchen.

Turns out that the salsa making process doesn't start out in the kitchen.  It starts in the grocery store.  So we went to the grocery store to pick out our produce.  It has always been a mystery to me how some people can just look and feel a fruit and know if it's going to taste good or not.  I was taught to pick out tamatillos (green tomatoes) and chili peppers and cilantro and onions and garlic.  Soon we were home and in the kitchen with our ingredients.

Cooking is JUST SO FUN!

Here came the uncomfortable part.  As a rule, american cooking is a science.  Everything is measured out in cups and teaspoons and tablespoons and all that.  It makes sense seeing that we do a lot of baking where this is important (you could never make a good bread without exact amounts of leavening agents).  Well in Mexican cooking there is not so much 'science' as 'art'.  That means terms like "pinch"and "about 7 or 8" and "that looks about right" and "woh! what are you doing!? STOP! That's way too much!" . . . hence the fear.  I'm a pretty left brained person and I like my exact numbers.

Well with a little coaching I was able to get the rightish proportions in my skillet to fry the ingredients.  It surprised me to hear some of the secrets to the art of salsa making.  Even though it isn't an exact recipe, there are a lot of tricks and important steps that I never could have learned from reading a recipe off the internet. Such as picking the fruit, scrubbing the tomatillos (who would have known that you have to take off an invisible outer layer of sticky goo before using them), and a dozen other little cooking tips that i was more or less clueless to.

You will notice that the salsa was
almost gone already.  mmmh!

Our salsa making extravaganza ended quite successfully.  The salsa was a hit with our all of our roommates and guests.  Mostly though, the experience was thoroughly enjoyable for me and for the rest of us involved.  I was able to get to know a practical stranger and made a friend.  We even spent an hour afterwards singing and playing guitar and ukulele (how could we not?)  I think that is what is so special about learning in a folk knowledge way. The hands on interactivity and human-to-human interaction is something we cant replace by interaction with a computer screen.  And it's also something that creates memories.  Who of us doesn't remember when Dad pushed us off for the first time on a two-wheeler bike?

The day after I made salsa again.  It didn't turn out quite as well without the master coaching me, but I do say that I now have the basic skills to keep learning.  Watch out Pace, Tostitos,  and all you other salsa people because here comes the competition!