Fresh Pico de Gallo

We came back from the beach and the bakery was fine. Graciela ran it for two days and it was fine. The conchas were made. The customers were served. The register was balanced. Everything was fine. And I stood in the kitchen at 4 AM on Monday and thought: the bakery survived without me for two days. Which is good. Which is necessary. Which also makes me feel expendable in a way I don't want to examine too closely, because if the bakery can survive without me then what am I? I am the founder. I am Rosa's daughter. I am the hands. But hands can be replaced by other hands, and Sofia's hands are coming, and Graciela's hands already know the recipes, and maybe the bakery doesn't need me as much as I need it, and that thought is the loneliest thought I have had since Rosa died.

Diego turned nine on July 15. He got his microscope — the real one, with glass lenses and adjustable focus, seventy-eight dollars that we couldn't afford and spent anyway because some investments are not financial, they are spiritual, and putting a microscope in the hands of a boy who wants to see the invisible world is a spiritual investment. He spent the entire birthday looking at things: salt crystals, a strand of Sofia's hair, the surface of a leaf, a drop of water from the faucet. He said, "Mamá, there's a whole world in a drop of water," and I said, "There's a whole world in a grain of flour, too," and he looked at me like I had said something profound, and maybe I had, and maybe bakers and scientists are not as different as people think.

Camila turns five on October 8. She has started the birthday countdown — one hundred and eighty-two days, she told me, having learned to count to one hundred and eighty-two for no reason other than the countdown. She wants a "singing party," which means a party where she sings. Not karaoke. Not background music. She wants to stand on a stage (or a chair, or a couch, or any elevated surface) and perform for the guests. She is five (almost) and she is already a performer, and the stage is wherever she stands.

I made pico de gallo this week — the fresh salsa of tomato, onion, cilantro, jalapeño, and lime. Not a recipe. An assembly. The simplest food in the Mexican kitchen, the thing you make when you have five ingredients and ten minutes and the desire for something bright and sharp and alive. Pico de gallo is the opposite of mole — where mole is twenty-three ingredients and six hours, pico is five ingredients and five minutes, and both are essential, and both are Mexican, and the range between them is the range of Mexican cooking itself: from the absurdly complex to the absurdly simple, and everything in between is dinner.

The recipe notebook has one hundred and twelve entries. I added nine more during the beach trip — recipes that came to me at night in the van while listening to the ocean: Rosa's refried beans (the ones with the lard, which is the only correct way, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise), her calabaza con pollo (chicken with zucchini, a Tuesday night dinner), and seven others that I wrote in the notebook by flashlight while Luis snored and the ocean breathed and the recipes flowed like water because the ocean loosened something in me that the desert had been holding tight.

So here it is — the pico de gallo. The thing I made this week when I needed something that was five ingredients and ten minutes and didn’t ask me to be anything more than a person with a knife and a cutting board. After two days away and the strange ache of realizing the bakery breathes without me, after Diego’s microscope revealed whole worlds in single drops, I needed something at the other end of the spectrum from mole — something absurdly simple that still matters. This is that recipe, if you can even call it a recipe. Rosa would have called it common sense.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

6 Roma tomatoes, seeded and finely diced
1/2 cup white onion, finely diced
1/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1 jalapeño, seeded and minced (leave seeds for more heat)
Juice of 2 limes (about 3 tablespoons)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste

Instructions

Dice the tomatoes. Cut Roma tomatoes in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds and watery pulp with a spoon, then finely dice the flesh. Place in a medium bowl.
Prep the onion and jalapeño. Finely dice the white onion and mince the jalapeño. Add both to the bowl with the tomatoes.
Add cilantro and lime. Chop the fresh cilantro and add it to the bowl. Squeeze the lime juice over everything and sprinkle with salt.
Toss and taste. Gently stir to combine. Taste and adjust salt and lime as needed. Let it sit for 5 minutes before serving so the flavors come together.

Nutrition (per serving)

Fresh Pico de Gallo — Five Ingredients, Five Minutes, and the Whole Range of Who You Are