Pico and the man

In my bachelor days, I lived in a chasmic wooden house that was nearing its first centennial. It wasn’t much for fancy amenities, such as “functioning doors,” or “yard,” or “heat.” During the winter, to wash dishes I would have to run the sink full of hot water and then float the plastic bottle of dish soap in it so that it would thaw enough to squirt some into the basin.

But the place had its charm. The bones were strong, as they say, and it was in an eclectic neighborhood that I soon fell hard for. What the house lacked in comforts it made up for in space; six big rooms of it, with some 1,400 square feet for a single dude who’s living in a new town with, for the first time in his life, no close friends or family. I had a kitchen, a bedroom, a dining room, a den, a living room, and a whole ’nother room I couldn’t find a purpose for, so I just stored stuff in it. Oh, and there was a giant front porch.

I threw a small pool table in the den and embraced the role of party host to my co-workers at the Ledger-Enquirer. Super Bowl parties. Chili cookoffs. Halloween parties. Movie-watching gatherings. Hey-It’s-Friday-Night parties. Hey-It’s-Saturday-Night parties. Hey-It’s-Sunday-Let’s-Get-Through-This-Hangover-And-Play-Videogames parties.

One afternoon, with a shindig already in full-gear, my buddy Sam Harper comes in with a plastic bag of groceries and takes over the kitchen. Under the byline S. Thorne Harper, Sam covered Fort Benning and the military for the newspaper, and he did heroic work covering the invasion of Baghdad in 2003. But on this day he was assembling his own little army. He conscripted a few partygoers and put chef’s knives in their hands. Under his direction, everyone merrily began chopping up things he pulled out of the bag.

Tomatoes. Onions. Garlic. Limes. Peppers. Some polarizing (but vital) sprigs of cilantro.

Everything got chopped, diced, minced or juiced and added to a big bowl. Then there was a sturdy shaking of salt over the top, a stir, and the presentation of the dish.

To me, a beer-drinkin’, chips-and-salsa crunching cracker boy from Florida, it was a revelation of taste and texture. This wasn’t just salsa. This was pico de gallo.

Etymologists say this chunky, savory snack is so named (literally “the beak of the rooster”) because folks would pinch it between their fingers to eat, thus making the beak shape. But it’s best, and neater, on a crunchy chip.

Sam was our hero that day, transforming these simple and common ingredients into something magical, and doing it by dragging others into a kitchen communion. Someone that day dubbed it “The People’s de Gallo,” and that’s what Jenn and I call it to this day.

Most days I just do it to pass the eye test and the taste test. But the proportions are loosely like this:

• 6 medium tomatoes, diced

• 2 medium onions, chopped

• 6 cloves of garlic, minced

• 3 jalapeno peppers, finely chopped (and seeded, if’n you’re scairt of the heat)

• 3 limes, juiced

• 3 tablespoons of cilantro, chopped

• 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Purists will say skin the tomatoes and wash out the juice and seed, but the skin’s a non-factor in the texture here and it’s completely harmless when you’ve got tomatoes grown organically, as we do at Dew Point Farm. And the juice and seeds are delicious, so we just use all of it. It can get soupy over time, but we find great uses for that liquid, including tossing in our black beans and rice or drizzling in a quesadilla before folding it.

That juice is also great “starter” for another batch. Just keep adding to it, like that bottomless cauldron of chili at Dinglewood Pharmacy.

Anyway, if you’ve not ever tried fresh pico, do it now, before tomato season is over. (And — he said, shamelessly plugging his vegetables — we just stocked The Food Mill with nearly 20 pounds of fresh slicing tomatoes and some jalapenos. And I know there are fresh onions and garlic there, too, from other local growers.)

Throw on a little music, invite over some neighbors if you’re after something more than a “me party,” arm them with a knife and a beer or glass of wine, and start choppin’.