You can experiment with salsa macha. Choose the dried chiles and nuts that you like, cook in oil until the ingredients change color and smell toasty, and then season with vinegar and your favorite sweetener.
Salsa macha will make a dish shine, from breakfast through dinner, soup to dessert. Use it to top guacamole, omelets, or even ice cream.
Ingredients
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- ½ cup olive oil
- 5 to 6 dried ancho chiles, stemmed, seeded and cut with scissors into small pieces
- 2 dried chiles de árbol, stems removed (keep seeds), cut into small pieces
- 5 cloves garlic, sliced
- ⅓ cup raw unsalted pecans or walnuts
- ⅓ cup raw unsalted pistachios
- ⅓ cup raw unsalted pine nuts
- ⅓ cup hulled raw pumpkin seeds
- ⅓ cup amaranth seeds
- ¼ cup apple cider vinegar
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste
- 1 teaspoon dark brown sugar or grated piloncillo, or to taste
Method
- Heat both oils in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the chiles, garlic, pecans, pistachios, pine nuts and cook, stirring, until lightly toasted and fragrant, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the pumpkin and amaranth seeds. Turn off the heat, add the vinegar, salt and brown sugar and stir well. Let the mixture sit for 10 to 15 minutes or longer. When cool, transfer the salsa to a jar with a tightfitting lid. You can also scrape the salsa into the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times until coarsely ground.
- The salsa will keep, tightly covered, for at least a month in the refrigerator.
Salsa macha defies any preconception you may have about salsas. There are no tomatoes or tomatillos, no onion, no fresh chiles. What it has are nuts—tons of them. The chiles in the salsa are dried, and they are fried in oil rather than being toasted, simmered, or roasted as in other salsas. All salsa machas have a combination of nuts, seeds, and dried chiles, and all are cooked in oil and with a splash of something sweet and something tangy. The nuts and seeds and the chiles can vary. In this one, I use some of my favorites: walnuts, pecans, pistachios and pine nuts, and both chocolaty anchos and feisty chiles de árbol. I love the addition of both pumpkin seeds and amaranth seeds—the tiny nutrient-packed seeds that are popular in Mexican sweets, irresistible. The result is toasty, nutty, a little bit spicy and sweet, with a chunky consistency and a satisfying crunch.