Chipsnsalsa!

Last July, for our Church picnic, Chloe signed up to bake a pie for the Apple pie contest. Considering that she can't bake on her own yet, that meant that *I* was signed up for the apple pie contest. The problem with this was that I had never baked an apple pie before. So, i set out on a quest to discover the best Apple Pie Recipe. But that's another story (although I *will* tell you that I --I mean chloe, won first place).

In addition to the apple pie contest, the church also held a salsa contest. Before I moved here, I never knew that people actually made their own salsa. But i've come to discover that making a good salsa is an area of great pride among many people in my community. Anyway, as I was hunting down apple pie recipes, it occurred to me that If I could make apple pie, maybe some day I could try entering a salsa contest! So I hunted for "the world's best salsa" recipe. Well, let me tell you... people have many more differing opinions about salsa than they do about apple pie. But I came upon an interesting recipe.

Apparently, there's a great restaurant in San Francisco, named Papalote, which is known for it's amazing salsa, and someone figured out how to mimic the recipe. So...I printed it up, and saved it for a rainy day, when I wasn't thinking about apples.

Last Saturday, when i was doing all of my lemon baking, I was re-inspired. As I was hunting down lemon recipes, I remembered my old salsa recipe that I was waiting to try. I looked it up again, and found an article that explained the writer's process of putting the salsa recipe together. The writer does such a great job of relaying her salsa adventure, that I would recommend you read her piece. Among other things, she mentioned that the owners of Papalote weren't about to share their secret family recipe, and that the last time someone offered to buy it, the price was $300,000!!! This must be some recipe!! So I made up my mind to make it as soon as I had time.

Because the recipe call for strange things that I had never heard of, like Pasillas, Pepitas, and Chiles de Arbol, I was sure I would have to go to a Mexican market to gather my ingredients. However, much to my surprise, my local Albertsons carried everything! I was so pleased that I promised the produce manager that I would share my salsa with him, after he found the Pepitas for me. That afternoon after picking up the kids from school, and putting away my groceries, and cleaning the kitchen and sweeping the floors, i cut up my chiles, and boiled my tomatoes, and roasted my pepitas, and made an amazing salsa! And as soon as it was done, can you guess my first stop? To Albertsons - to share this tastiness with Ed the produce guy.

Now I figure that if a recipe is worth $300,000, then some of you out there in cyberland may want to try it as well. So, without further ado, here is The Recipe. Once again, though, I strongly suggest that you read the article that goes with it, first, in order to get the feel for how special this salsa really is.