Blogging each week on a specific ingredient has helped me grow accustomed to explaining my purchases when I reach the checkout at the grocery. It never fails. The cashier can be completely zoned out and ambivalent to my presence, but as soon as they get to that one moderately obscure item, they wanna know all about it.

This week, I had resigned myself to the fact that I'd most likely not get to have my little food chat with the cashier. Tomatillos, after all, aren't exactly exotic, right? Well, to tell you the truth the cashier showed more interest in my bag of little green spheroids than I have ever been confronted with. She asked a few questions about them, and I did my best to answer them.

Then, the bag boy also got in on the action, asking what they were and what I was going to make with them. It was a little bit awkward, and I began to feel as though people were craning their necks to see what kind of alien produce I was buying. I am truly convinced that if I would have stayed long enough, they would have called the manager over to marvel at them for a while.

I guess it's pretty cool that people are interested in learning more about foods they might not immediately reach for on their own. Honestly, though, tomatillos shouldn't be that scary. As the name implies, they are related to the tomatoes you and I slice up for our burgers, but admittedly have a look and a taste that's very different. While they are usually covered in a dry, brownish husk, the actual fruit of a tomatillo is (or should be) brilliantly green and firm. (It's actually in its unripe stage, but that's when it's best.) The fruit has a fresh, tart flavor that lends well to a variety of applications (one of my favorites is a pork loin recipe from Emeril: Bam! ); the most traditional use of the fruit is in salsa verde.

While salsa verde can mean any variety of green sauces used south of the border, the most popular use of the term refers to the sauce made with tomatillos. Similar in many ways to the red salsas made with tomatoes, salsa verde has a much brighter, tart flavor.

Feel free to switch out this salsa verde in just about any application where you'd use standard salsa, including but not limited to sitting on your couch with a bag of Tostidos.

Ingredients
4 cups tomatillos, husked, rinsed and diced
1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
4 jalapeno peppers, seeds removed
1 tsp. salt

Directions

Roast the jalapenos under the broiler (find the tutorial here)

Combine all of the ingredients in a food processor (or in a bowl if using an immersion blender) until pureed.

Cover and refrigerate.

So, I suppose you're wondering if salsa verde is available at the grocery, in jars just like the red stuff we love so much. Of course it is, but the real question you should be asking is whether or not it's as good as the homemade.

Well, we've decided to do the taste test for you. Check out our very first video (yup, I said first ... so be gentle) wherein we pit store bought salsa verde against our very own recipe in a no-holds-barred bout that I'm calling "Supermarket Death Match."

Watch it here.

Originally posted to The Grub Report by Steve Gibson on July 4, 2007 02:50 PM