When my husband proudly came home from work one day with a giant bag full of serrano chiles and tomatillos, I took the hint. Confused, but I took the hint. I was confused because the Mister is notoriously averse to spicy things, yet he shows up with a score of pretty potent peppers. Also, I had never in my life handled tomatillos before. I had seen them at the grocery store all through my youth and wondered about these strange jacketed tomatoes, but never actually picked one up.
Obviously, these weren’t staple produce items in our household. So what else was I to think about this haul other than that the man had a hankering for some homemade salsa? Apparently he had no plan in mind when he excitedly made his purchase from the produce truck in his work parking lot. When I declared my intended use for these mystery ingredients, he delighted in my ingenuity, despite my insistence that this was obviously his subliminal motive.
There’s something really satisfying about filling a big baking tray with vegetables, sloshing them in olive oil and spices, and roasting the whole lot in one go. It’s my go-to move for most vegetable side dishes and I intuitively assigned the same fate to these members of my future salsa. I have seen tomatillos blended raw into salsas, but roasting definitely achieved the flavor and texture profile I envisioned. They impart just the right notes of tangy and slightly sweet to mellow out the heat from the chiles. Then the bright pops from the cilantro and lime and earthy warmth of the spices round out the whole thing really nicely. Hint successfully obliged, was the general consensus.
After that, my husband encouraged my new-found salsa-making penchant by gleefully supplying me with the loot he conveniently picked up while on his break at work. It wasn’t long before this zippy condiment made it into many batches of chilaquiles and chicken stews, adorned many scrambled egg breakfasts, and was filled into big, fat mason jars to share amongst our family and friends. This is pretty much the only salsa I regularly make from scratch since it’s so versatile and keeping a jar of it on hand never fails to inspire a flavorful and easy meal to satisfy [secret] salsa cravings.
