Tomatillo Sauce - Finally!

Have you ever passed by those small green tomato-looking vegetables in the produce department and wondered what they were? I have, many times. And my husband, Wayne, has asked me the same question innumerable times, "Do you know what these little green things are used for?" No, I didn't, but now I do. They are tomatillos.

Tomatillos resemble small green tomatoes but are covered with a husk. The husk is easily removed. They are a member of the nightshade family and are often used in Mexican cuisine to make green sauces. 

Craving a new taste in salsas recently, I pulled an old cookbook off the shelf,The Great Salsa 

Book by Mark Miller (1994) (ISBN 0-89815-517-7). Why had I never used this book before? 

The pictures of 100 salsas, each in a small decorative dish, were seductive.

. 

This is how I made Tomatillo Salsa Verde with Avocado. Starting with 15 tomatillos, I removed the husks and rinsed the tomatillos under running water, then chopped them into medium size pieces. Into the blender they went. Then I chopped three chiles serranos, leaving seeds in, and added them to the blender. (I am a wimp, so I put on disposable gloves to handle the chiles.)

Next step was to add a bunch of fresh cilantro and two tablespoons of fresh lime juice. I don’t cheat here. I buy small limes and squeeze them with my Mexican lime squeezer. A teaspoon of sugar and one of salt completed the ingredients. I hit the purée button.

When I poured the salsa out of the blender, the taste was great, unusual really, but the texture! Oh my. My salsa was watery, nothing like the picture in the cookbook. Then I noticed that there was a similar recipe in the book that called for an avocado to be added. I poured off some of the liquid, chopped an avocado, dumped everything back in the blender, and puréed again. Ah, much better. This salsa not only tasted great but looked appealing also.

We ate it on everything – chips, corn tortillas, tacos. I even caught Wayne dipping a spoon into it. I think the salsa would even be good on rice or a baked potato. And it is healthy (well, except for the chips we dipped it with, I suppose). The taste was tart and a pleasant change from our usual green chile and jalapeño salsas. And for less adventurous taste buds, the amount of chile could be reduced, but I liked the slight picante aftertaste.

Now I am remembering that I tried to grow tomatillos in the garden many years ago without knowing what I was going to do with the crop. But there was no crop. All I found growing were empty husks. Later I learned that several tomatillo plants are needed for pollination.

Only 98 more salsas from the Mark Miller book to go. Do you have a favorite salsa? If so, I would love to add it to the list..