mango salsa

This was dinner. A very very late dinner. For some reason, I wasn't hungry all day long. And then finally it hit me, POW! Hunger that could not be denied. 

A mango salsa is prepared from fresh mango, cucumber, jalapeno peppers, onion and lime.

Masa harina is used to fashion corn tortillas. The tortillas are pan fried to stabilize, cut, then deep fried and seasoned. 

How to cut a fresh mango.

Regard the mango in all its aspects.

Top, where the stem was.

Front

Back, where the sun probably didn't shine directly.

Bottom, standing upright on its head. Note the ovate form. It is not a circle. They never are. This determines the axis of the cut. 

Starting at the bottom, or the top if you wish, attempt to slice downward. The knife will hit the pit located in the center of the mango. The pit is a strange disc-like seed. Now that the knife hit the seed and you've located either the seed's top or its bottom, gently slide the knife to the right of the seed to skid alongside it as close to it as possible. Wouldn't want to waste any precious mango. 

Do the same thing to the other side. 

Laying the seed disc flat, cut around its edges to recover the portion of mango flesh still on the fleshy side of the seed disc. 

Lay the mango strips skin-side down. As if skinning a fish, lay the knife flat and cut immediately on top of the skin holding the knife flat with the work surface. Slice off the entire skin this way. Discard the skin. 

Slice the two halves with the bulk of the mango flesh into strips.

De-skin the strips in the same manner as performed on the strips on both sides of the pit. Like this: ↓ Fun! Except it does gets tedious because there are so man slices to de-skin. 

There. Now all the mango strips are de-skinned.

Dice the mango strips. 

Ta daaaaaa. 

Mangos are iffy. You can never fully trust they will be perfect. An easier, and more reliable way is this: ↓ Frozen. They're quite good, actually. The benefit is that all the rejects are already culled and they last nearly forever as these have. 

Now for the cucumber. Peel and de-seed the cucumber. 

Get rid of those awful seeds. They make you burp. I bet'cha if you planted those seeds, they'd grow. That makes me want to try it. 

Jalapeños. Reasonably hot, low on the Scoville heat scale, flavorful, but one-dimensional, if you ask me. 

Contrary to popular wisdom, the heat of chiles is not in the seeds. The seeds are inert. I know for a FACT ! because I tested chile seeds. Using an X-ACTO blade, I carefully removed the membrane from the hottest chiles on earth then bit them open and held them on my lips and tongue. Nothing. Utterly harmless. However, the membrane that holds the seeds onto the flesh will burn your face off. And then, if you handle these barehanded as I did, then go potty, the capsaicin-laden alkaloids will transfer to everything touched by your fingertips including your tender bits. Washing your hands with soap doesn't get it all off. So heed my warning, unless you like that sort of painful uncertainty, and I sort of do. At any rate, you can control the amount of heat by controlling how much inner membrane you allow into your dish. Here, most of it is removed, but not all of it, and that little bit that remains on the flesh is quite enough to heat the entire bowl of salsa, even though jalapeños are considered kind of mild as far as chiles go. 

See? some membrane is left on.

The onion is diced as you do. I was taught to slice the onion in half from root to tip, then bisect each half. So, quarter the onion so that each segment has two flat surfaces. It is positioned so that half-moon onion rings are showing and available for dissection.  The half-moon rings are carefully cut through from broad end to rounded end, root or tip, laterally, that is with the knife flat with the work surface in a stack working up the onion, slicing through all the rings to produce slabs. This is a two-handed operation, one hand is applying downward pressure on the quartered onion section and the other hand is slicing through flat with the work surface. You can imagine then where hand and knife would intersect without an intervening onion. Worse, the onion gets smaller as the cut completes toward the root or the tip, so the lateral cuts require constant readjustment in pressure to account for the narrowing onion. So one wrong move and WHAP there goes a finger tip. Then few downward slices are made to assure cuts are made through the half moon rings that evaded being cut by virtue of their curved surfaces. You usually see these done perpendicular to the work surface and to the original slices but radially as spokes to the onion's concentric half-wheel makes more sense mathematically. I do not care for this common onion dicing technique. Too unnecessarily dangerous. Instead, I cut off half-moon discs, stack them, then chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, all the way around the half-moon stack as if the knife is the radius of the half-moon rings, until it all falls to diced bits in highly-controlled uniform size. Then repeat that until the entire onion is perfectly diced. I feel more comfortable with this technique, which I developed myself, although it is less efficient, it is safer, more accurate and more ninja-like. 

So there's that. And Man, I am telling you, this mango salsa is delicious. It really is the best salsa ever. The mango-sweetness combined with the coolness and freshness of the cucumber is incredible. Then the piquant onion, here a sweet onion so not nearly as biting as usual, with the capsaicin-heat of jalapeño. The breathy aromatic cilantro as if drawing a minty Happy Face directly into the chopped bits. Then, to paint the lily, gild the already golden, the gentle kiss of citrus lime sends this simple dish, much more simple than this photo set belies, right over the top and over the edge. Zoooooom. 

You know what this needs? Chips, that's what.

These chips are made fresh tonight, and they will be made fresh tomorrow too. Fresh fresh freshy-fresh. The freshest chips around. 

1/2 cup masa harina is dumped into a bowl. That same cup is filled with hot water, but not all of it is used. But you never know for sure. So it's available. 

The powder took almost all the water. There is about 1/8 cup water left in the little metal cup.

I could tell by rolling the balls that the mixture was slightly too dry. Had I used all the water then it would probably have been slightly too wet. Wet masa balls smash more easily than dry masa balls, but they are more difficult to peel off the plastic intact. So I left them dry. That resulted in thicker tortillas than usual, but that was okay with me. They'd be sturdier for carrying salsa. 

Flatten with your hand, and fix the edges before smashing. 

Smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open. Peel off plastic, flip, peel off other side of plastic. Fry. 

I watched a few videos on YouTube and the ladies doing this skip the frying step. That one day when I skipped this frying step, the chips dissolved in the hot oil when I deep-fried the raw masa segments. So I've been frying them first ever since then. For I am a careful sort of chap. 

Smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open. Peel off plastic, flip, peel off other side of plastic. Fry.

Smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open. Peel off plastic, flip, peel off other side of plastic. Fry.

Smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open. Peel off plastic, flip, peel off other side of plastic. Fry.

Smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open, rotate 1/4 turn, close, smash, open. Peel off plastic, flip, peel off other side of plastic. Fry. Done. 

Five masa balls smashed and fried into five corn tortillas, cut all at once into six chips each = thirty tortilla chips. 

MATHS !

Boy, that's not very many tortilla chips, is it? That's okay. I'll keep everything out and do it again tomorrow. 

This time I seasoned the chips with coriander, for I love it so, and garlic powder, because, eh, and kosher salt. So the chips are really loaded up with season-y goodness.