Willie’s Fresh Green Salsa
by Willie & Sandra Simmons

Ingredients:
6 medium cucumbers

8 tomatillos

4 avocados

1 red onion

1 bell pepper

1 bunch cilantro

4 fresh jalapeños,  seeded

Salt to taste

Juice of 1 lime

Here’s the story on how we came to know and love this salsa:
It was the week of Christmas 2009. We were at my parent’s house at Lake Travis, outside of Austin, TX. Bill and Linda Bux came over and brought with them a jar of Wrights of Texas Fresh Green Salsa as a gift to my parents. When they walked through the front door, I’m pretty sure there was a ray of sunlight shining on that jar. Now I love Bill and Linda but I could not wait to get rid of them that day. And it didn’t matter that they brought that salsa for my parents. I knew I was going to love it and eat it all gone! And I did have to share, but the four of us (Willie, Dad,  Cojo and I) schnarfed down every last drop of that salsa in 2 seconds flat.  Please don’t even think of looking up the word schnarf online because all of those definitions are totally wrong! Everyone (who grew up in my family) knows that to schnarf means to gobble down as quickly as possible so you can get more than anyone else.

After we licked our fingers, we all grabbed cell phones, land-line phones, and laptops to call Bill and Linda and find out where they got that salsa.

Fade to black.

Our world dimmed when we learned that the only place to get it was Houston.

Willie offered to drive (3 hours one way) to get more. I told him to get going! My parents said no. I didn’t think they could boss me around anymore once I hit 40.

I was wrong.

Everything else that happened that Christmas really pales in comparison to that salsa.

When Willie and I returned to Atlanta, he went to work on coming up with that salsa recipe.  Now Willie is a great cook and never uses recipes but honestly, I thought he had no hope. But then I tasted his results and this is as close as you can get to Wrights without going to Houston!

Here’s the story on why I’m making the salsa today:
I have this friend named Julie. I truly love her for many reasons but one of them is because she loves Willie’s and my cooking. And she’s just over-the-top about demonstrating that love! She gets loud and throws her hands and arms up in the air and laughs and smiles and exclaims and then she repeats the whole litany until we stop feeding her! Now who wouldn’t love to feed a person like that? So when it came time to think up a Christmas present for her, I quickly decided she would be the first ever and sole recipient of the Simmons Food of the Month Club! And true to form, when she received our fancy gift certificate in her email she got loud and threw her hands and arms up in the air and laughed and smiled and exclaimed and then she repeated the whole litany all though a string of text messages! See – she is amazing! This month, she is getting the following: Willie’s Fresh Green Salsa and Santitas Chips, Coconut Macaroons, My Famous Shortbread Cookies and Chewy Molasses Cookies. And I am having the time of my life photographing and otherwise documenting all of it! Seems more like a gift to me!

Instructions to make the salsa – did you forget what we were doing with all that story telling?:
You MUST have a food processor to make this recipe. And a very large bowl. NO, not that bowl. It needs to be larger. Huge!

1) Peel the cucumbers. Before you do, let’s talk about vegetable peelers. Are you afraid of them? I am. They hurt if they cut you. One time I cut clean through my thumbnail. Took weeks to heal! And it hurt!! I said ‘bloody hell’ a lot for a long time over that one! Willie, I mean Santa, put a new peeler in my stocking this Christmas (2011) and I was skeptical and a little ticked to be honest. Really Santa? Another way for me to cut myself? Thanks. I used the new peeler today. It peels very thinly so you can control how much to take off and the blades on both sides of the peeler are serrated so if you peel in a back and forth motion, you will be done lickety-split. Here’s the peeler. And I didn’t cut myself.

Now, slice one cucumber into 5 equal pieces and toss em in the food processor and turn it on and let it go until the cucumber is completely puréed.  Once that’s done, pour the purée in the very large bowl and then repeat with the rest of the cucumbers. Don’t try to put more than one cuke in the food processor. Just do it my way before you try it your own way, ok?

2) Remove the paper-like husk and wash the tomatillos. Cut them in half and put them in the food processor with the seeded jalapeños. Purée completely. Add to the very large bowl.

3) This is the hard part right here. Cut the avocados in half and take out the pit. Spoon the flesh into the food processor WITHOUT EATING ANY OF THE AVOCADO! Then purée it and add it to the very large bowl. Or you can save yourself the agony and buy a couple extra  avocados and take a break and schnarf them right down before proceeding.

4) Peel the red onion and cut the top and bottom off and then cut the onion in half and then each half into 4 equal pieces. Put them in the food processor which by the way is pretty messy by now. And if you haven’t spurted something green all over your white shirt by now, you’re not doing this right.
Take your bunch of cilantro and chop off the bottom third of the bunch and discard that. Then put the rest in the food processer and….purée and then add to the very large bowl.

5) Cut the flesh off of the seedy core of the bell pepper. Purée it. Add to the very large bowl.

6) If you need a new juicer – Santa also brought me this and it’s wonderful. I used it to juice my lime. You should juice yours now and add it to the VLB (very large bowl).

7) The trickiest part of the recipe comes as soon as you stir the contents of the VLB.  Because it’s time to taste and season it. Some of the veg you’ve added to your salsa can have a bitter edge and this will vary every time you make this salsa. Salt cuts the bitter and enhances the flavor. So at this point you will add salt, taste, add more salt, taste, etc. Stir well each time you add more salt. You will use a lot of teaspoons to taste the salsa during this process. I used 8 today. And you will probably add more salt than you think you should but it’s ok. And by the way, I would use the Kosher coarse salt. It’s wonderful. Whatever you do, just add the salt slowly, a three-finger pinch at a time. Be patient. You’ll know when you have it right.

8) Once you think you have it properly salted, go get a good tortilla chip. We love Santitas and I think they’re also the cheapest around! Get another teaspoon and put some salsa on the chip and eat it. Is it amazing? If not, add more salt.

9) I keep mason jars in my cabinet with my drinking glasses and I buy the jars and the tops at Walmart by the case. Only the wide-mouthed ones. We use the jars for drinking glasses and to hold votive candles and any other thing we think up on a daily basis. But we also use these jars frequently to give away the food we make. They make good looking containers with a raffia bow around the top. This recipe will make 3-quart jars of salsa and that includes all the salsa you eat while you’re tasting for proper seasoning. (P.S. I call them mason jars all the time. But they’re really Ball jars.)

OK! So that’s it!! I hope you will enjoy this raw, fresh salsa as much as we do! Let me know how it works out for you! xo, Sandra

Broccoli and Avocado Salad (without Avocado) from 60-Minute Gourmet by Pierre Franey

A few days ago I was reading Kate Morgan Jackson's post on her facebook page (Kate of the blog Framed Cooks) that had something to do with the cookbook 60-Minute Gourmet by Pierre Franey. And I thought, hey (!), I have that cookbook! And I haven't used it in years!  So I went and pulled it out and looked for recipes I could make without going to the grocery store that day. And I found three. And then I did something else and I forgot all about wanting to cook out of this book. For several days.

But this morning, I remembered! And I'm glad I forgot and then remembered again because in the several days that went by my avocado went bad. If it hadn't gone bad I would never have substituted and then I might not have liked the dish quite so well and then I never would have eaten this dish, nor photographed it, nor written about it. And what fun is that?

This is what it looked like when I was trying to be fancy like Pierre:

But I'm not French and I'm not male and I don't really know how to plate food and I wanted to eat more than three pieces of grapefruit and three pieces of broccoli so this is what it looked like when I ate it:

And it was delicious.

Here's what I did (and I'll add some notes after to let you know more about the original recipe):

1 small bunch broccoli
salt
2 small grapefruit (Use a sharp knife to slice the peel off the grapefruits including all the white pith, then cut between the membranes to release the grapefruit segments. Squeeze the leftover membrane and reserve the grapefruit juice.)
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons grapefruit juice (See above instructions for the 2 small grapefruit.)
2 tablespoons olive oil
freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Cut the broccoli tops into florets. If the pieces are large, split them at the bottom and cut in half. Rinse and drain.
2. Drop the broccoli into boiling salted water. When the water comes back to a boil, pour the contents of the pan into a colander and rinse with cold water and drain. Chill the drained broccoli in the refrigerator.
3. Once the broccoli is chilled (about 30 minutes), arrange alternate pieces of broccoli and grapefruit segments on each of 4 plates.
4. Whisk the remaining ingredients in a small bowl and pour it over the broccoli and grapefruit. Serve immediately.

Now, Mr. Franey did pretty much the same thing. Except he used avocado slices in place of the grapefruit slices. I am certain it would be extremely tasty this way. And I think it would be nice to try it with both the avocado and the grapefruit segments. Which reminds me of my grandmother who made a delicious salad of grapefruit segments and avocado slices and poppy seed dressing. Have you ever had it?

I Was Thinking This Morning...

...I wonder if I completely bug the heck out of my non-foodie facebook friends by going on and on and on about food day after day after day (on my facebook statuses)? So I thought about trying a food blog and it sounded like a bad plan. For a lot of reasons. But then I wanted to tell my foodie friends about the delicious dish I made today and with the photos and the recipe and the modifications to the recipe and how I got the idea to make this particular recipe...well, I needed more space than my facebook page. So now I have a blog with one recipe. And that will PROBABLY be that.