Salsa Gringo
John Glass

Mexican salsa used to scare me. Just the slightest hint that salsa was nearby would be enough to move my plate to a safe location. This became especially necessary with my ornery father-in-law Charlie close by. Having shelved his Norwegian heritage while living in Mexico for a number of years, he became notorious for the salsa-sabotaged chip. He would hand me one and watch my face turn from eggshell white to burning-building red. Then he’d laugh hysterically as I ran to find my drink.

  I grew up in the suburbs of Sacramento. My parents, a few generations distant from their European familial roots, moved us to California from Nebraska when I was young.

My father was strictly a meat and potatoes man. Monday was meatloaf and mashed potatoes, Tuesday, roast and boiled potatoes, etc., etc.

We rarely ate out, and if we did, it was at Tasty Freeze or Sizzler. No Mexican or Chinese food. No Italian food, either. I thought all Italian spaghetti tasted like Spaghettios.

  My first taco came from Taco Bell. I rarely ate pizza. Too spicy. I definitely suffered from white-bread taste buds.

Things changed when I began dating Elena Teresa Mendoza Ericksen, who eventually became my wife.

Her mother Sebastiana’s cooking, with unwritten recipes brought from her native Oaxaca in southern Mexico, opened my eyes and taste buds to a whole new world.

At first I ate her meals to ingratiate myself with Elena’s family, I tried Spanish rice, taquitos, carnitas, chorizo (just reading the ingredients label is enough to frighten any child born on the Midwestern plains), and gallina en mole, pieces of chicken swimming in an incredibly delicious dark brown sauce.

With Sebastiana’s amazing culinary touch, it all started tasting very, very good. I regularly elbowed away Elena’s sister and three brothers to heap my plate with seconds.

  However, I remained resistant to salsa. Only when goaded by Sebastiana’s concerned frowns or her children’s pejoratives like “Pan crudo”— literally “Raw bread” — did I began hesitantly to try the very, very mild supermarket jar salsa. I would put a tiny bit on my plate and then barely dip my flour tortilla into it. Occasionally I’d risk a dab of their homemade salsa.

And then one day a fantastic opportunity presented itself. My wife, her sister Elsa and cousins all went shopping, leaving me home with Elena’s Tía Alicia, also from Oaxaca. We needed salsa for dinner, so she took me with her to the store to buy the necessary ingredients. Roma tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, garlic, cilantro, jalapeño and serrano peppers were some of them. Over cervezas, I watched her blend them, taking mental notes. Then and there I vowed, with Tía Alicia’s encouragement, to make my own salsa some day

  I was a quick learner. Most of my initial batches were good, but not hot enough to satisfy my in-laws. Elena would rate my salsa a six or seven on a scale of ten. Once, with desperation written on her face, she lowered my grade to a two. When we next went shopping for salsa ingredients, I realized why. I had put parsley, not cilantro, into my salsa. Well, they certainly look a lot alike.

  I’ve been cooking up my own salsa for eight years. The more the years go by, the hotter I like it. Now it’s hard for me to eat eggs, potato chips, sandwiches — just about everything — without salsa. I like salsa on hot dogs. I even add it to Campbell’s chicken-noodle soup.

My salsa has been climbing higher and higher on my wife’s scale, and even my brother-in-law Carlos grudgingly acknowledges that it’s “OK.” A big compliment coming from him.

But the biggest compliment came from Elena’s eggshell-white-complected friend Lisa the other day. She tried my salsa, yelped and ran into the kitchen for a glass of water. Now, I laugh hysterically.

(John Glass is a supervisor at the Sacramento Children’s Home.)

© 2005, Hispanic Link News Service
06/12/05
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