Pico de gallo

As mentioned before, nice little spicy peppers are in season here. They're being sold by the bagloads and so I'm finding many ways to make these delicious beauties part of my everyday meals. Pico de gallo is something I really enjoy and love to just slop on just about everything. It's a pretty simple salsa, and the flavors come from the freshness of the ingredients. Instead of the traditional jalapeños I'm used to using, I used the tiny little peppers I've been buying. They are quite a pain in the ass to cut and seed, but they are quite spicy and delicious, so well worth it in the end. If your hands are extremely sensitive to the chile burn, I suggest wearing gloves, or at least being very careful to touch the inside of the chiles as little as possible. I added some fried diced garlic I had left over as well, yum! I made mine in the jar I would be keeping it in for ease, but you could just as easily put everything in a bowl, mix, and then jar it.



Makes about 1/2 cup of salsa, so adjust portions accordingly for larger batches

Ingredients:

Tomato, 1 small
Onion, 1/2 of a large one, diced up.
Fried garlic, diced and fried in oil, about 1/2 tablespoon [optional]
Chile peppers, seeded and diced, about 3 tablespoons worth, more or less depending on your spice preference
Lemon, 1/2 or a small lime, squeeze the juice out into the jar
Black pepper, to taste, mine was about 1 teaspoon
Salt, very small dash (my preference)
Fresh cilantro if available [I didn't put in this batch because I cannot find, I don't like putting parsley in Pico de gallo, but I guess you could as a substitute)

Basically, add all the ingredients to a jar, cover, then shake it up until everything is integrated well and you have your salsa. What I did was add each ingredient to the jar as I finished chopping it up. When I was done, I added the lemon juice, the pepper, and a tiny amount of salt and shook. Easy, fast, delicious :)

Serve with tortilla chips (ha ha ha, as if I'd find that on this island), a more realistic idea is just with some sort of crispy potato chip. Or you could mix it into rice, etc. I get creative with my salsas because of the lack of tortilla chips here.

Note: a restaurant I used to frequent back in the U.S. would add diced strawberries or pineapple to their Pico de gallo. I've done it before, and trust me, it was delicious! So if you want to see if you like the taste, by all means, branch out and expand those taste buds!