A few weeks ago, my friend invited me over for movies.  Over movies, there is wine, chips, and mango salsa.  Of course my taste buds get all snooty, declare the salsa foul, and suddenly I am determined to make my own.

I managed not to declare the salsa foul in the middle of the movie, attempting to save some grace.

But that didn’t stop me from trying to make mango salsa.  I note that mexican tomatoes are on sale, and chilean mangoes are on sale.  Still not cheap but after months of no good tomatoes I like this idea.

I started with this:

  • One mango, two weeks old now because I’ve had this plan for a while
  • Three tomatoes, only one week old
  • A bunch of cilantro
  • Dried arbol chilies.  Apparently I used all my fresh chilies in a curry or something.  I know I bought fresh chilies for this purpose.
  • Some garlic
  • A lime
  • Half an onion

I threw two tomatoes, some of the cilantro, and some water in the blender (it gets unhappy if there is no water with the food).  Meanwhile, I put the chilies (I used about 10-15?) and the garlic (four cloves) in a pot with some water (very little, just enough to cover) and started boiling it.  The other tomato I diced and tossed into a large bowl.  Some of the cilantro leaves I saved, also chopped, and put into a bowl.  The blended goop also went into this bowl.  After the dried chilies couldn’t be called dried any more, they went into the blender, with the water (which there wasn’t much left at this point).  I learned from previous experience that boiling liquids in a blender will blow up in your face so I added a little water, the lime, about half the half-onion and blended that up too. The rest of the onion was chopped fine, and went into the bowl.  The mango I also chopped up–I read somewhere you should use a less ripe mango, but now I think that is because if it’s perfectly ripe you’ll munch the mango rather than make salsa.  The parts that couldn’t get chopped either went into the blender or into my mouth.  I threw a bunch of mango chunks into the bowl (while saying “one chunk for them; one chunk for me”) and at the very end I was squeezing the mango pit over the blender.

All this went into a bowl and stirred up to make it look like salsa.  One taste and I quickly realized it wasn’t working.  So I added:

  • Salt
  • Vinegar
  • A can of tomato paste
  • More onion
  • Cumin
  • A little chili powder
  • More salt

All this made it taste much much better.

A few things learned:

  • I know blenders like watery things, but salsas shouldn’t be quite so watery.  While I think I’ve got a good consistency, it was a battle, and I really should get a food processor.
  • Salt.  I know you are planning on putting salty chips in this, but you still need salt in the salsa itself.  More than I might initially suspect.
  • More tomatoes.  Three just isn’t enough.  Also, chop more, blend less.  The cilantro I think I got the right chopping/blending ratio (most stems blended, most leaves chopped).  I can’t wait for tomato season to come in full swing.
  • More mangoes.  I can’t call this mango salsa, which was the original intention.

I’m going to try this again at some point, though I’m not sure if I’ll make it a front page post or just edit this one or pretend I never did.