NEW YORK CITY (By Julia Moskin, NYT)
March 17, 2010 —
It is
not easy being a Mexican restaurant
in the United States. Some customers
are outraged if the menu doesn’t
have burritos; others, if it does.
Some see authenticity when chips and
salsa aren’t on the table; others
see a rip-off.
“Everybody here thinks they know
what Mexican food is,” said Nicholas
Cox, the chef at La Esquina in
NoLIta. “Especially if they’re from
Texas or California.”
Salsa, in particular, has emerged as
Mexico’s most misunderstood culinary
export. In Paris, Mexican
restaurants make it with minced
cornichon pickles and ketchup; in
Japan, with green shishito peppers
and Kewpie mayonnaise; in American
factories, with corn syrup and red
bell peppers.
Soon after the United States
“discovered” salsa in the 1980s, it
soared to popularity, famously
outselling ketchup by 1992. American
cooks flirted with peach salsa and
corn salsa, while supermarket salsa
evolved into a thick, sweet mix.
But on its global journey, salsa as
it is actually made in Mexico often
became lost.
Irma Verdejo, an owner of Tulcingo
del Valle in Hell’s Kitchen, said
that her customers often see it as a
generic mix-and-match condiment.
“I fight with people about salsa all
the time,” she said. “They want to
put this salsa with that dish, or
they want it more spicy, or less
spicy. And they always think it
should be free.”
Javier Olmedo, a Oaxaca University
student and aspiring chef, said:
“Watching someone shovel in salsa
with tortilla chips is strange to
Mexicans. Like how an American would
feel watching someone drink salad
dressing out of the bottle.”
Salsa is a cornerstone of the
Mexican kitchen, a contrast for a
repetitive diet of corn, squash and
beans. Just as French cooks
understand that béarnaise sauce
suits some dishes, hollandaise
others, Mexican cooks know salsas
have different qualities and
functions.
Recently, true salsas have been
finding their place at the Mexican
table in New York. “Now there is a
conversation between Mexico and the
United States about what is good
Mexican food,” said Iris Avelar, who
grew up moving between Guadalajara
and the San Francisco Bay Area,
where her parents had a restaurant.
She is an owner of La Superior in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which
specializes in carefully made
Mexican street food.
“When my parents opened their
restaurant 20 years ago, we had to
have a ‘gringo salsa’ with no
chilies at all,” Ms. Avelar said.
“That would never happen now.”
Brilliantly flavorful salsas, made
in the classic way, have become much
easier to find here, both at hipster
magnets — like La Superior; Cascabel
Taqueria on the Upper East Side;
Mercadito in the East Village;
Barrio Chino on the Lower East Side;
and Hecho en Dumbo, which just
opened on the Bowery — as well as at
traditional places like Tulcingo del
Valle, as well as Tortilleria
Nixtamal and Tia Julia, both in
Queens.
The chefs in these kitchens create
salsas that go way past “red or
green” and “mild or hot.” They
highlight the green, herbaceous
flavors of fresh chilies and the
raisiny sweetness of dried; they use
heat judiciously, to contrast the
richness of meats like house-made
chorizo or braised veal tongue; they
let some salsas rest overnight to
soften their flavors and make others
to order to emphasize the snappiness
of the ingredients.
These places do not serve what chefs
call “contemporary Mexican cuisine,”
a sophisticated blending of Mexico,
Spain, France and the Americas.
Instead, they are fashionably
glorified taquerias that give
respect to Mexico’s most basic and
widespread snack.
“A great taco is a perfect food,”
said Danny Mena, the chef at Hecho
en Dumbo, who is from Mexico City.
“A tortilla, a protein and then the
salsa is just the genius Mexican way
of seasoning every bite with
acidity, heat and salt.”
Felipe Mendez, the chef at La
Superior, said, “In Mexico, we say
that the meat is what makes a taco
good, but the salsa is what makes it
exceptional.”
The word “salsa” does simply mean
“sauce” in Spanish, but in truth
salsa in Mexico almost always means
there will be chilies.
But salsa is not simply a liquid
delivery system for the chilies’
heat: it is meant to have flavor and
depth, with a mix of tart, sweet,
salty and hot effects. It should be
“poignant” with heat, Mr. Mena said,
but not hit you over the head with
it. (Only salsa picante — thin red
sauces like Cholula, Tapatío and
Valentina — is simply hot.)
Salsas can be made with fresh
chilies (like serrano, jalapeño,
poblano or habanero) or dried
chilies (guajillo, cascabel, ancho,
morita or chipotle), but the two are
rarely combined.
There are salsas rich with pumpkin
seeds and peanuts or warmed with
cloves and canela, the cinnamonlike
native Mexican bark. There are
salsas of tomatillos and tomatoes,
and salsas that are raw (cruda) and
cooked (cocida). A cooked one, like
salsa ranchera (country sauce) or
salsa verde (made from tomatillos),
can be used as a table sauce or a
cooking medium, in dishes like
chilaquiles (fried tortillas
simmered in salsa).
Raw salsas are explosive, setting
off fireworks of heat and acid in
each bite. Cooked salsas are more
like candlelight, shedding a slow,
steady warmth.
The most basic fresh salsa of finely
cut tomatoes, green chilies and
onion — basically what’s served with
chips in neighborhood Mexican
restaurants — is often called “pico
de gallo,” in North America, but
simply “salsa Mexicana” in most of
Mexico.
Most authentic salsas are based on
just a few ingredients — chilies,
tomatoes, onions, garlic — which are
easy for home cooks here to get
their hands on. What produces the
dizzying range of flavors, tastes
and textures is how those
ingredients are cooked (or not) —
charred on a dry surface for
smokiness, shallow-fried in oil for
creaminess, simmered in water for
brightness or simply buzzed in a
blender for punch.
One of the best salsas in the city
is the balanced, slow-burning salsa
ranchera at La Esquina, made daily
by Gloria Reynoso, who has been with
the restaurant since it opened in
2005. Its base is a thick crimson
paste, sweet but with bitter and
earthy undertones, made from soaked
dried guajillo chilies. The salsa
combines lusciously with runny egg
yolk and soupy black beans in the
restaurant’s huevos rancheros.
“That liaison is just so correct,”
said Mr. Cox, the restaurant’s chef,
who also uses the salsa on roasts
and, as he said, “when the braised
beef turns out drier than you wanted
it.” Another authentic use for
salsa, as a moistener for dishes
that become dried out by cooking or
time, is a handy trick for home
cooks.
Other memorable New York City
salsas: Mercadito’s salsa de
cacahuetes, an unctuous blend of
peanuts and four different types of
dried chilies; salsa borracha,
traditional “drunken” salsa spiked
with tequila and sweet with
long-cooked onions, which tops
roasted goat at Cabrito in the West
Village; and a not very authentic
but wonderful red sauce at the
newcomer Dos Toros near Union
Square, made with flowery, fiery
fresh habanero chilies, which are
rarely used for salsa outside the
Yucatán.
At Tulcingo del Valle, a creamy
salsa roja is spiced with cloves and
canela, the Mexican cinnamon that
comes in soft, balsa-like shards.
Jesus Verdejo, the chef, said that
this is the basic red sauce in his
hometown, Puebla, and it tastes rich
and complex. Because the dried árbol
chilies and onions are fried in oil,
the sauce turns creamy pink when
emulsified in a blender, a key piece
of modern Mexican cooking equipment.
The traditional tools for making
salsa are a molcajete, a
rough-textured mortar, and a
tejolote (pestle) made from black
volcanic rock, which can pound
ingredients into a fine purée.
Sometimes, that texture is
desirable, but most of the cooks
interviewed said that a completely
smooth salsa is the modern
restaurant standard, here and in
Mexico.
Mr. Mena, of Hecho en Dumbo, uses a
big, hungry-looking hand blender for
his excellent salsa verde, a
rounded, tomatillo-based trickle of
concentrated flavor with serrano
chilies. He said that salsa is
infinitely adaptable, defying
labels, able to accommodate whatever
good cooks want to do to it.
In modern Mexico, salsa often gets
extra savor from salsa inglesa
(Worcestershire sauce), salsa de
soya (soy sauce), jugo Maggi (an
MSG-based sauce) or spoonfuls of
chicken broth.
“Salsa is not even vegetarian in
Mexico,”
Mr. Mena said in discussing what
makes salsa genuine. “How can anyone
know what authentic is?”
