Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Tantilizing Tuesday: Pico de Gallo

Welcome to the Tuesday version of our Savory Sunday. I feel bad that I was only able to get one recipe in last Sunday so I figured I'd put this up today to share this great recipe with everyone. It really was delicious.

This is my go-to recipe for Pico de Gallo. It's a recipe from Tyler Florence.

4 vine-ripe tomatoes, chopped
1/2 medium red onion, chopped
2 green onions, white and green parts, sliced
1 Serrano chile, minced
1 handful fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 lime, juiced
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt

The fresh ingredients:

I only used about half, maybe a little more, of the red onion. Here are the onions chopped up:

I am not very good at dicing tomatoes. Just terrible at it. The pieces are always too big, and there's a lot of juice everywhere. It's like a regular crime scene. But there is one thing I'd really like to make an effort to improve on and that's getting rid of more juice. I saw on a cooking show recently where the host took some tomatoes and had them sit and drain basically and after 20 minutes a lot of the excess juice had come out of the tomatoes. I'd love to figure out how to do that. For now, I'll have to settle for this:

Now, the recipe calls for a Serrano chile but that adds a lot of heat so I went for the less-spicy JalapeƱo, for my wife's sake. I would have used the Serrano and left some of the seeds.

Juice the lime and add the cilantro and salt. Now, I didn't use the olive oil this time. I have in the past but it's sort of a taste thing. To me, it's fine without it but you have to be careful because you are adding extra liquid in there, and the tomatoes have a lot of juice.

Still, with or without the olive oil, this recipe really makes a fresh-tasting Pico, a great condiment which doubles as a good dip.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh, this is so very close to my own version. What makes it so fresh tasting and so good is the fresh lime juice! I'm going to have to make some up now, you have me salivating. Now where did I put the tortilla chips?

Lissaloo said...

Yum, a great recipe for one of my favorites! I have an award for you on my blog! :)

thrasherswife said...

YUMMMMMM.... yum, yum, yum....

c said...

Hey LB - I LOVE pico. Mmmm. Hey, I gave you the same award 5th Sis did, but you deserve two :)