Pass the Very Old El Paso

Is Pico de Gallo salsa? Or is it as a friend tells me, “pico’s pico dude”?

Pico de Gallo is the combination of raw tomato, chili, white onion, cilantro (representing the colors of the Mexican flag) and sometimes an acidic ingredient like vinegar or lime juice, Pico – as it’s known on the street - is a type of salsa.

Salsa is a vague word. Bernardino Sahagun a Franciscan Priest who entered the land that would be known as Mexico in 1529. In a letter he described a combination of ground squash seeds, tomato and chili as a sauce. Sahagun was using salsa, the Spanish derivative of salsus and if Salsus sounds like the name of a Roman Emperor to you, you’d be partially correct, salsus is Latin, meaning salty or salted. Words evolve, so sauces may be salted, but they aren’t Roman anymore.

Salsa as used in the States certainly doesn’t mean a traditional sauce, it means a Mexi-condiment. Sometimes the salsas are fresh, as is the case with Pico but more and more they are cooked, considering the outbreak a few years ago this is wise but it also extends the shelf life of the product, which is also good: Tomatoes are seasonal maybe 3 months a year, yet I enjoy quesadillas year around. But salsas don't have to be tomato based – tomatillos make a fine salsa verde. There was a the craze in the late nineties through the early ought-oughts where 3 nouns (the first one being a fruit) preceded the word salsa, Mango, cashew, cumin salsa. Pineapple, avocado, black bean salsa. 

Pre-pico

Words do evolve and salsa has become a shorthand for an acidic, spicy condiment. Surfing the net, checking out a sample of recipes to see if there were universal ingredients (answer =no; just common ingredients), I landed on the Food Network page. Emeril had a pretty straight-forward pico recipe + garlic. Rachael Ray, managed to avoid chilies altogether. And if that weren’t somehow predictable enough, a rollover with Guy Fieri started yelling at me. Remember when Emeril’s bam and kick it up a notch were a sure sign of the foodpocalypse? In retrospect he was positively Jeffersonian compared to Fieri’s W.

A few weeks ago, a combination of garden tomatoes and cilantro leftover from a curry led to a batch of pico. It was real, real good an hour after I made it. Not quite as special the next day. By the time I finished it up on day 5, it was meh. Freshness is one of the draws of pico distinguishing it from cooked salsas. Maybe that’s why your friend is so adamant in making his distinction or maybe he likes to say things loudly and throw dude on the end, as if that makes a statement self-apparent.

So, yes Pico is a salsa just goldfish and sturgeon are both fish. Wait is that a bad comparison – I would eat sturgeon, salsa and pico but not goldfish unless they were crackers which means they are no longer fish. Pico’s pico but it is also a salsa.