"If you can read, you can cook." That's my mother's motto. She taught me that, at its most basic, cooking isn't any more difficult than following a recipe.
For mother’s day, I posted the meal my mother wanted, complete with recipes. For father’s day, I was going to do something similar, but my dad just wanted grilled chicken and broccoli salad. So today I’m sharing my mother’s recipe for broccoli salad which is onion free, because raw onions upset my father’s stomach.
Don’t let the one hour plus prep time worry you. Most of that is for chilling in the refrigerator (the salad, not you. You can chill in the living room). Not actual time spent in the kitchen.
We’ve been trying to cut down on red meat over here, but meatloaf remains one of my wife and my favorite meals. Many people in this situation, would just use their same meatloaf recipe, but switch to ground chicken or ground turkey. There is just one problem with that. Red meat has more flavor. Both are simple facts of life from it’s higher fat content. So using a meatloaf recipe designed for ground beef will leave you with a bland meatloaf. A new recipe is needed. This is that recipe.
To give it more flavor, I added carrots. My first shot at this, I just added raw carrot. It came out a little crunchy for my taste. So I sauteed the carrots instead. And since I was already sauteing, I sauteed the onion as well. I’ve been making this recipe for a couple months now, but I’d say I finally perfected it last night.
I love salsa. I add it to a ton of foods and often make my own. My tastes tend towards medium heat, but my wife doesn’t have as much of a stomach for spicy foods as I do, so we generally buy mild.
Actually, salsa is Spanish for sauce. So talking about salsa as a single food is kind of talking about humanity as a single person. But in American usage, salsa typically refers to tomato-based, spicy sauces suitable for use as a dip. In Mexico, this is called salsa roja (red sauce). That still has a lot of variety, but at least we can talk about generalities.
History of salsa:
Salsa is a traditional food prepared for thousands of years in central America. The Mayans made a version that we call guacamole. Salsa roja was preferred by the Aztecs. When the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in Mexico in the 1500′s they found it sold by street vendors.
Sahagun was the first European to make written note of “tomates.” According to Sahagun, Aztec lords combined them with chile peppers and ground squash seeds and consumed them mainly as a condiment served on turkey, venison, lobster, and fish. This combination was subsequently called “salsa” by Alonso de Molina in 1571.”
Usage of the dish didn’t expand much beyond Mexico and Hispanic communities until the 1940′s when the style of cooking known as “Tex-Mex” started to gain popularity, first in the Southwestern US and then the rest of the country. Pace is the oldest salsa company in the world, started by Dave and Margaret Pace in their San Antonio general store in 1947.
Salsa nutrition:
Salsa is primarily made of tomatoes, chile peppers, onion, and salt. So the upside is that it has a good amount of Vitamins A & C, along with Iron and dietary fiber. Downside is that it has a lot of sodium as well. If you make your own, you can limit the salt or us a potassium-based salt instead. In that case, this becomes a low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb treat.
Have a recipe you'd like to share? Go to my guest post policy for more details and a form. All you need is your recipe and a photo of it. If I pick it for my upcoming cookbook, you will receive a free copy.
Posted by Edward Antrobus in Recipe Sunday | Tags :bacon, broccoli, onion, salad | No Comments
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