Green Salsa for Lazy People

I have a rule of thumb for salsa: a good recipe has five things in it. Why? Because then I can remember it by counting it off on my hand. I am too lazy to go through life looking up the recipe for something that I should know how to make off the top of my head.

Circular logic aside, I have a convergence of vegetables today: tomatillos, jalapeños, onion, cilantro, and garlic. See? Five things.

Tomatillos usually get cooked, so I will throw them in a pan with water. I will throw in the jalapeños, too. If I were feeling really lazy, I wouldn’t seed them first. I’m going to do it, though, because the people who will eat this with me don’t like too much heat. I may be lazy, but I’m not MEAN and lazy.

Meanwhile I chop up some onion and some cilantro and a clove or two of garlic. How much? Some. Who cares. I’d measure, but I’m too lazy. How fine to chop things? Meh. La-a-a-zy.

Here’s what makes it super lazy: all the things are just going in the blender. I will push a button and then it will be salsa. How much lazier can I get?!

Tomatillo Salsa
A handful of tomatillos, husks removed, rinsed
One or two jalapeño peppers, seeded or not
A clove or two of garlic, minced
A few tablespoons of onion or scallion, chopped
A handful of cilantro, chopped roughly

Put the tomatillos and jalapeños in a pan with water just to cover. Bring to a simmer and cook until the tomatillos turn a dull green and get heated through, about 5-10 minutes. Drain.

Meanwhile, wash and cut up the other three things.

Throw everything in a blender and pulse a few times until everything is roughly blended. You should have chunks and lumps and few worries.

If you need to add a little salt to taste, I won’t tell and I won’t count it as one of the five ingredients.

Pico de Mango

In case you didn't get the bulletin, it's summer. The days are a grind of punishing sun. The night flows in, sultry, its dark heat draping us with a slick sheen of languor. The dense, humid air trails its heavy fingers across our skin, leaving trickles of sweat to slip down a back or a neck. In my garden, the scents of jasmine and lily hang in voluptuous clouds, nectar oozing to the tips of turgid pistils, pollen sifting off to stain fleshy white petals.

It’s salsa weather. Mangoes are a shudderingly fine balance between acid and sweet. Their lazy, musky nectar and silk-smooth flesh are a perfect complement to the vigorous crunch and zing of onions, chiles, and cilantro. Round it off with the clean finish of lime to cut the lingering sweetness.

Mango Salsa
I have won so many salsa contests with this recipe that people don’t know whether to get mad or hungry when they see me coming.
2 ripe mangoes
5 or 6 scallions or half a small onion
1 or 2 jalapeño chiles
A fistful of cilantro
Juice of one lime
A dash of salt

Chop everything and mix it up. That’s it!

Bonus: How to cut up a mango
There are still people in the world who do not know how to cut up a mango without waste or injury. Not another thumb lost to mangoes!

Anatomy of a mango: The large, flat seed is in the center of the mango. Its fibrous outside is entrenched in the flesh. The trick is to cut away the fruit as close to the seed as possible, then come back for what’s attached to the seed.
























Addressing the mango: Find the stem to tell you where the center is. Hold the mango so the seed is perpendicular to the cutting surface.





















Lop off the cheeks. With practice, you will learn to know how close to the center you can cut.

















Score the flesh. Try to cut as deep as the skin, but not through the skin.



















Now hold the mango slice like a votive offering and push it inside out. The skin will pop from concave to convex, presenting you with many cubes of mango that you can slice or pick off the skin.





Finally, pare the skin off the remaining disc and whittle the flesh off the seed. This is slippery and possibly dangerous. If you don’t want to risk your fingers, and especially if no one is looking, you might just want to gnaw the fruit off the seed.

Hey, cook’s privilege. You earned it.

Fish Tacos with All the Fixings

This post originally published 8.23.2009. Photos added 9.20.2009.

[REDACTED: Friend, I’m sorry. I just came home from a weekend out of town, and so I did not cook and photograph this dish for you like usual. But I plan to cook it next Friday—and then you could cook it, too, and it would be like we were having dinner together. Cheers!]

Two or three summers ago, I made it my mission to create the perfect fish taco. After extensive research at restaurants, fish shacks, and taco stands around the Twin Cities, I settled on a few (highly opinionated) fish taco axioms:

• Grilled fish, not breaded and fried. Breading hides the fish; it’s for poseurs. Also, the entire arrangement will be wrapped in a tortilla, which is technically a kind of bread.


• Corn tortillas only. No wheat. Wheat tortillas are the wrong size, texture, and flavor. Plus they are morally bankrupt! Tortillas are made of corn! ¿Entiende?


• There should be vegetables, but you should never put iceberg lettuce in a fish taco. In fact, you should never put iceberg lettuce anywhere. Certainly not in your mouth.


• There should be some sauce. A finely chopped pico de gallo is good. There’s a special fish taco sauce, too. At the very least, there should be a lime to squeeze on the taco.


• Finally, it would be a really nice touch to serve some black beans and queso fresco to go along with the tacos.

I used these rules to develop my own recipe for fish tacos with all the fixings. This would be a good thing to serve to friends for a last summer hurrah on the patio. Maybe throw in some margaritas or Negra Modelo and a nice fruit sorbet for dessert.

Fish Tacos with All the Fixings

This will serve four people. There is a lot going on in here, and this is the order in which I think you should fix things.

Prep List:

• Pickled onions


• Seasoned fish


• The sauce


• The fixings


• Grill the fish


• Heat the tortillas


• Assemble the tacos

The pickled onions:

This excellent pickle comes from Diana Kennedy’s The Art of Mexican Cooking.

1 lb red onions, trimmed, peeled, sliced thin
½ c fresh lime juice
1 ½ t sea salt

Put everything in a glass bowl, mix, and allow to macerate for 2 hours. Maybe stir the onions halfway through and press them down into the juice. They will make more liquid as they pickle. They’ll keep, refrigerated, for weeks. (But when you find out how good they are on a sandwich, they will never live as long as a week.)

Back to prep list

The seasoned fish:

2 t thyme
1 t black pepper
¼ t cumin
½ t cayenne pepper (more if you are a chile-head)
½ t salt
1 lb catfish fillets

Mix or grind the seasonings together. Rub them into the fish fillets. Stack the fillets and set aside 1 hour or more.

Back to prep list

The sauce:

Besides the bare minimum of squeezing a lime over the fish, it's fun to dress up your tacos with sauce. You can use a fresh homemade pico de gallo. You can use any kind of good quality bottled salsa. I also serve this one.

8 oz sour cream
Juice of 1 lime
Bufalo chipotle sauce or any hot chile sauce

Mix them all together, adding chile sauce to taste and lime juice until the sauce is like a thin mustard. I use a funnel to pour the sauce into a squeeze bottle.

Back to prep list

The fixings:

• Half a head of red or green cabbage, cut as fine as you can. (I’d use a knife. Food processors tend to mush up the cabbage.)


• One or two jalapeños, cored, seeded, and sliced into thin rings.


• A bunch of cilantro, picked off the stem if you are patient or chopped if you are not. It is acceptable to have some soft stems in your cilantro.


• The pickled onions.


• The sauce(s).


• Tortillas: They must be the small corn kind. You will need four per person, two for each taco.


• Black beans: These go next to the taco, not on it. If you don’t want to make your own, then Bearitos has a nice fat-free refried black bean.


• Queso fresco: Crumble it and put it on the hot beans. Mmmm.

Back to prep list

Grill the fish:
Grill it two or three minutes on a side, then test it with a knife. If it is almost as cooked as you’d like, take it off the heat. The fish will continue to cook a little on the serving plate.

Back to prep list

Heat the tortillas:
You need 16 small corn tortillas to make 8 tacos for 4 people.

I have one of those hateful glass-top electric stoves. Its only saving grace is that I can do this right on the stovetop. You may prefer to heat up a dry skillet.

Put the first tortilla on the hot, dry surface for about three seconds. Flip it over (use your fingers if you are clever or a spatula if you are cautious) and put the second tortilla on top, then wait three seconds. Flip the stack over, then add the third tortilla and wait three seconds. The tortillas should be getting some dark spots on them from this treatment. Even if a bit of charred tortilla gunk accumulates on the hot surface, you’re still good.

Continue flipping the stack and adding a tortilla until all the tortillas are on the stack. Do the final flip, wait the final three seconds, and then transfer to a warm plate and cover with a clean dish towel.

Back to prep list

Assemble the tacos:
For each taco, lay two tortillas on the plate so they overlap. Take a fork to the fish fillets and flake/break off about two ounces of fish per taco; put this on the tortillas. Squeeze on some lime. Dress with fixings as desired, being careful not to overstuff. Top with a wee bit of sauce(s). Put a nice spoonful of black beans on the plate and put some crumbled queso fresco on top of them.

To eat the taco, fold the tortillas over the bottom and then fold the sides over to make a packet. It’s better to make a lot of little tacos than one giant taco.

¡Buen provecho!