Zucchini and Tomatillos Cooked In Chilies

I'm a big believer in using what you have. What I had was a pot in which I'd just made the most delicious chile sauce. The pot still held the remnants of the sauce and I hate wasting a delicious thing. I wanted every last bit of heat. So I quickly chopped some zucchini and diced some tomatillos. I figured the zucchini might be weird but the tangy sweetness of the tomatillos would be amazing. In general I think spicy fruit is highly underrated. Think Thai mango and papaya salads. They are heavenly. Sweet and spicy go together. If you can add sour and salty to that then all the better, and there was a little salt in the chili sauce and a little natural sourness in the tomatillos. Perfect.

So I deglazed the pot with a half cup of water and lightly boiled the tomatillos and zucchini. Then they became both a hamburger condiment and a salad ingredient. The salad needed a little more sour from some vinegar, as well as some oil to mute the heat, but it worked. It worked better on the hamburger though, because it was pretty pungent...

What's wrong with Toronto? Do they not believe in good tomatoes? I went to St. Lawrence market, my mecca of beautiful food, and bought a very inexpensive container of tomatillos. I figured they'd be just as good as the ones I'd been having in Quebec. Nope. They were junk. They were sour and either too soft or too hard, picked too early from the branches. I roasted them and they never got sweeter. The complexity of taste I'd come to expect was lacking. I wasted $2.00 that I'll never get back, but more importantly my respect for this little shop in St. Lawrence market that carries my favourite Pinehedge yogurt and kefirs, Niagara Foods, is much less.

Anyway, if you don't want to make the chile sauce recipe you can still recreate this effect for the purposes of creating a great hamburger condiment (much better than ketchup and pickles) by boiling a little water with a sprinkle of salt, sugar, a dash of vinegar and some crushed chilies or cayenne or other chile powder to taste. If it doesn't work out, though, don't blame me. Blame the chile powder. Then add some sliced zucchini and diced tomatillos (they can even be a little under-ripe since they're getting cooked). Cook about 5 minutes at a simmer and then drain the pot or remove them with a slotted spoon. Done.

Another great hamburger seasoning is grilled or broiled or baked tomatillo. Stick the whole tomatillo (or 3) in the oven or toaster oven at 400 Fahrenheit and let it cook until it's a little soft of the skin breaks. This generally gets rid of some of the tang and you'll end up with a very sweet hamburger topping. That is, unless you buy your tomatillos in Toronto. I challenge you to find a good tomatillo there. Maybe from an organic market? The roasted tomatillos (when ripe) are also great with rice, kind of like Middle Eastern traditions squeeze a regular grilled tomato over their cooked basmati for flavour.