Pico de Gallo

One thing about living abroad is that you’ll quickly discover that some of your favorite foods simply don’t exist, or exist in a way which is … well, just truly wrong, odd, scary, or disgusting. One of those things, for us, is Pico de Gallo. We’ve written about it before (twice), probably because it’s become something of an obsession with us.

We tend to go through a jar in about a week … or maybe in about four days, depending on whether we have pinto beans in the fridge or not. If there are beans (and even these odd white beans will do), then the salsa really goes quickly.

One of those things about doing the same recipe over and over again is that it tends to get better – you tend to perfect the amount of Thai Bird chiles (5, this time), and the amount of lime juice to vinegar (3 limes, 1 Tbsp vinegar). It all just … comes together. The other thing about cooking the same thing is that your mind tends to wander, and you tend to think about things, or at least I tend to. If it’s not obsessing about school, it’ll be some strange echo of a thought, and I’ll not know why it’s there until I go and look it up, and then … wonder why it’s there. This time, it was the phrase Salsa Criolla. Why this would be echoing about in my brain, I don’t know, but T. looked it up for me to find that it’s an Argentine version of a Creole sauce (see Asado Argentina for the recipe and background).

Now, I went to school in Argentina, but they weren’t very big on meat there (the school and neighboring town were vegetarian). I can’t figure out where or why I’d know about Salsa Criolla, but the memory of the phrase lingers. I can hear it pronounced as an Argentine would, and not just any Argentine: an Argentine from Entre Ríos.

My subconscious is right to remember the salsa, no doubt: aside from the addition of chiles, a salsa criolla is just a pico de gallo. And I’ll bet that it, too, is highly addictive.

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