Tomatillo ("Hog Plum") Salsa: Beyond the Great Wall

I once made a tomatillo chicken dish with canned tomatillos...in Newfoundland, home of bland food. There was no way I could possibly find them fresh, and if by some miracle they popped up in a grocery store near me I'd have to be stupid to buy them. I think maybe once I did and I remember biting into skinned water. That was approximately the flavour. The inside wasn't that liquidy but it was nothing worth writing home about.

I assumed that this was not the true flavour of a tomatillo. Kind of like having an unripe fruit. If something doesn't grow here there's almost no way it can possibly taste as good as it would when it's fresh from a farm or the wild of a place where it actually does grow. Ah, mangoes and dates...I can only imagine. Passion fruit...I dream about these things. Thank goodness cake doesn't grow on trees or only in tropical rain forests. I'd have to buy a cake tree and hit up my brother for the money to start a cake greenhouse in Montreal. It could also serve as a sauna. It'd be next to a boutique hotel. I'd make millions.

Unfortunately, no, this is not to be my destiny. What was I talking about? Oh right, tomatillos. Not a big money-making operation, tomatillos.

When I found them once again at a Montreal farmers' market I got very excited. Do you know what this means? It means they might actually taste like tomatillos are supposed to taste!!! They were organic, even! I could have thrown a party then and there but I forgot to bring a cake from my pretend cake tree (my cake tree would not allow beet buttercream frosting, and would probably just follow all the recipes of Joy the Baker. It would also make cakes according to season - strawberry angel food cakes in summer, chocolate pudding cakes and molasses cakes in winter, and mousse year-round, of course. Cake trees are always in bloom, miracle of nature that they are).

So I don't know if my tomatillos are the best ever, but they are actually flavourful and made possibly my most amazing salsa ever.

These guys look like under-ripe tomatoes, but there's a bit of an addictive tartness to them that makes them go perfectly with a little bit of meaty flavour. I have two tomatillo recipes - one for a sauce for chicken with a little jalapeno from my Southwest Slow-Cooking cookbook, and one from "Beyond The Great Wall" for a Chinese tomatillo salsa for meat or sticky rice that's supposed to be made with a bit of ground pork and cilantro. I'd actually bought a bit of ground cerf (deer) meat on a whim from the same market, completely coincidentally, and igured the stars would never align for me in this way again. So I made the Chinese salsa and I'm so happy I did.

Traditionally, this dish would be made with makawk (or a "hog plum" in English) and is traditional in the south of China near Burma, Thailand and Laos, hence why it's traditionally eaten with Thai sticky rice. According to the cookbook's authors, Jeremy Alford and Naomi Duguid, it's "jaew" a kind of dish made from grilled and then pounded ingredients, so the grilling gives a nice charred, cooked flavour and then the pounding gives a rough, thick texture. It won't be watery like a Mexican salsa.


Ingredients:
3/4lbs tomatillos, unpeeled. this is a bit confusing since tomatillos have skins and peels. I think you want to take off the leafy peel and leave on the tomato skin since it's hard to remove the peel itself if it's not charred, and I'm pretty sure you want the skin off for the pounding step later (don't make this with canned tomatillos because you can't grill them with the peels on and then peel them. It will be a big mess)
1 cup shallots of red onion, unpeeled, halved if large, quartered if red onions
1 head garlic, unpeeled, but separated into individual cloves
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
2 oz (1/4 cup) ground meat [pork has the most flavour, and is what's called for, but I liked the richer taste of game. So whatever you have that's organic or at least antibiotic-free, such as beef, bison, goat, ox or even venison (deer)]
1/2 cup fresh coriander (cilantro)

If you don't have a gas stove this is not going to be as amazing and it's going to take a lot more time. I don't have a gas stove, but I do have a small grill. It's not super, but it has a grill on the bottom and on top and is named after George Foreman, so it's not bad. Unfortunately it meant that although my tomatillos grilled faster, some got squished, and since they weren't all the same height, some got less charred than others. In the end it probably would have been faster to use a skillet.

You're supposed to put the tomatillos, garlic and shallots on a grill screen or fine-mesh surface on the grill or put them in a cast-iron skillet on medium-high heat. Cook, turning frequently, until splotched with black on all sides and softened. It's supposed to take 10-15 minutes. About 25 minutes later I was almost satisfied with my tomatillos. My grill was pretty charred from the burnt juices of the charred, busted tomatillos, but I love that flavour...maybe that's why my salsa wasn't as watery. I'll have to do it the same way next time.

While that's all grilling and you're forgetting to turn the contents of the grill, you're supposed to put the water in a large skillet and bring it to a boil, then add the meat and salt. Cook until t changes colour and break it up so it doesn't get lumpy. Now who really just cooks a quarter cup of ground meat? No butcher will sell it to you in that quantity. So you either cook the whole pound you bought or you cook the quarter cup and freeze the rest. I just cooked the whole thing and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt was STILL enough! So don't go overboard on it. You can add more to the salsa in the end if it's not salty enough...wait, I DID do that, so maybe I should have just added more in the first place...no, I like the flavour of salt directly on tomatillos...I stick with my original measurements.

The browning of the meat should just take a minute, but I think it'll take a bit longer if you cook a whole pound. If you stir constantly, maybe 3 minutes.

When your grilled things are fully grilled let them cool before removing the charred skins of the onions, garlic and tomatillos. If you left the leafy bits on the tomatillos it might be interesting to just peel that off and leave the uncharred tomato skin on. I don't know what this would taste like. Grilled tomatoes are pretty common in a lot of other food traditions, though (British and Iranian, for example), so it can't be bad either way, just maybe not as sweet? Then put all the grilled and peeled things in the blender of food processor and pulse to chop roughly. you don't want a purée. You want some chunk. Pour it out into a bowl and add the meat (or 1/4 cup of your cooked pound) including a little of its juice. the nice thing about deer is it's a very lean meat (so a steak of it is often very dry if over-cooked or not properly marinated) so when ground there's actually a fair bit of flavour (since this is fattier than most butcher cuts of it) but not a whole lot of excess fat like pork would have.

Just before you serve the salsa stir in the chopped coriander. I had organic stuff that was ridiculously aromatic and not bitter at all. So it went really nicely with the slight tartness of the tomatillos and sweetness of the grilled shallots.

Serving suggestion: Yes, I said serve it as an accompaniment to grilled meat or sticky rice, but I would also serve this as a main dish since it's so high in protein. Blasphemer that I am, I ate it with baked potatoes one night and another with thick sourdough bread. It would also be great with a flatbread too, which I'm sure is what would be used in Northern China if tomatillos (hog plums) grew there.