A Land Without Salsa

I have discovered something rather unfortunate. Not, not unfortunate - tragic. I am not able to make my delicious salsa in France, not with the ingredients available here. I am just about on the verge of tears ... how will I live my life, without the comfort of salsa? Let me tell you how I've made this discovery, but brace yourselves. You may want to cry, too, before this is over.

It started with an armoire. Our house is very old, and has almost nothing in the way of storage, especially in terms of closets. Patrick and I needed to get an armoire - something as large as a closet, with space for lots of clothing. We looked at a few used furniture stores and found nothing that really fit the bill, or our budget. We resigned ourselves to waiting until we could make the trip to Ikea and pick something out there. Then, while telling his boss, Jacques, about our predicament, he thrilled us by saying, "Oh! But I have an armoire we don't use - you'd be doing me a favor if you'd take it off of my hands." And just like, that, we had an armoire. We picked it up, put it back together, and voila! We had a place to put away our clothes. Lovely.

The day after receiving this largesse, Patrick said to me, "I'd like to get Jacques a gift to thank him. What do you think would be good." We tossed around a few ideas - and then Patrick said that perhaps we should make him something - a cake, or something (Vote for Pedro!). And then he sealed my fate with, "Hey! Why don't you make him your dip?" Meaning, in Patrick-speak, why didn't I whip up a batch of my incomparable fresh salsa and we could present that as a thank-you, along with, perhaps, a bag of tortilla chips and a bottle of beer. I said (unaware of the pitfalls lurking ahead), "Sure! I'd be happy to do that." Hmmm.

So, the next day, I set out for our local grocery store, called Intermarche (en-tair-mar-shay). I had some other things to pick up, and eventually made my way to the produce section. Strike one - they didn't carry red onions, cilantro, or any sort of hot peppers. And after viewing the canned tomatoes on offer in the canned foods aisle, I knew I would have to investigate a larger market in order to get my salsa concocted. Disappointing, but not altogether unexpected. Intermarche, is, after all, just a small market in a small town. Of course they wouldn't have any "exotic" ingredients available - makes sense, I thought.

Yesterday, we had to go to Mende (mahnd) to take care of some bureaucratic-type stuff. Luckily for me, Mende is home to Hyper-U (ee-pair-ew), one of what is called an hypermarche (ee-pair-mar-shay) by the French. Think Super Target or one of those Walmarts with the grocery store included, and you get the idea. They sell everything from clothing and lawn furniture to fresh seafood, produce, and meats. A BIG place. Surely, I thought, I will find my salsa ingredients here. We set out in good spirits.

My spirits rapidly fell. They did indeed have red onions, which was a relief, but these red onions are about a third of the size of the typical Bermuda onion I am accustomed to dealing with. I bought four, just to be on the safe side. There were no jalapenos, Scotch bonnet peppers, serranos, or anything else that might be termed a "hot" pepper - oh, wait - I finally uncovered a few greenish smaller peppers, looking a bit like a cubanelle pepper, and the sign says they were from Morocco, and are spicy. Hmmm. Well, beggars can't be choosers - into the cart it goes. On to cilantro ... but nary a trace of anything even remotely cilantro-ey can I find. There's parsley everywhere, but nothing that will finish off a salsa. Well, I've made salsa without cilantro before - it's preferred,but not essential. I'll survive, I thought.

Tomatoes. Here's a big secret - I almost never used fresh tomatoes for my salsa. The perfect base, in my opinion, are cans of diced tomatoes and mild green chiles that you find in the Hispanic food sections. I made my way to the "World Foods" section, and, gasp! no canned tomatoes with green chiles. No canned green chiles, for that matter. Nothin'. In the regular canned foods section, I chose plain chopped tomatoes in water. Maybe with some fresh tomatoes, these would work out. (I find that fresh tomatoes can be a little overpowering, and also impart a bit of a mealy texture - thus I started using the canned ones.) Thankfully, I remembered, I had my trusty container of Adobo seasoning at the house - shipped with my things over the Atlantic - and that is the real linchpin of my salsa, so I crossed my fingers and hoped it would be all right.

I compounded the salsa last night. I had a cucumber and fresh garlic in the house already, so I was good there. I bravely chopped up and combined the other ingredients found at Hyper-U. I stirred and smelled and added and prayed. I decanted the stuff into small containers and put it in the fridge overnight to let the flavors meld.

I just tasted it. Oh, it's serviceable enough to come out of a jar labeled "El Paso" or "Pace", but it's most certainly not my salsa. The tomatoes are overpowering, and have developed a sweet, almost ketchup-y flavor. The garlic and red onion are not even on speaking terms, and the cucumber seems to have disappeared altogether, instead of bringing that deliciously cool note to the acidity of the salsa. The "hot" pepper has not lived up to its name. I cannot give this to anyone as a gift - it tastes like it rolled off of a conveyor belt in Indiana. Worse than that, I am despondent - I was not kidding when I asked above, how will I live without salsa? Those of you who know me know how much I love the stuff. When I would make this back in the States, I would pretty much eat it, to the exclusion of all other things, until it ran out. Now, without any cilantro or decent canned tomatoes/green chiles, I think I am quietly doomed to only be able to make it when I go back to Florida for visits.

Don't get me wrong, the French know how to eat. At the Hyper-U, their cheese counter makes your head spin. They have more varieties of sausage and pate and terrines than I can count, all of them delicious (except the blood sausage, of course. Gross.). Their prepared foods are completely unlike those in American grocery stores - these are fine foods, prepared simply and ready for you to take home and heat up and truly enjoy. The produce section is a thing of beauty, everything looking fresh, and ripe, and wonderful. And I can't express my joy in French soft drinks - the sodas and the sirops (seer-oh) that you add to a glass of water for a delightfully tasty beverage, just as sweet or unsweet as you like ... but I am mourning the absence of a decent Hispanic foods section, with multiple flour tortillas to choose from, guava paste, canned chiles and tomatillos, ranchero sauce for enchiladas, and so much more. What will I do????

Maybe I can find a mail-order service that can send me things like this through the mail. Cilantro paste in a tube, jars of chiles and jalapenos, vaccuum-sealed flour tortillas. And white corn chips (only yellow available here.) Perhaps when we head up to Paris at the end of June for Patrick's brother's wedding, we can locate some place in the city that would sell such things. Until I figure it out, salsa is not on the menu, that's for certain. And now I've gotta think of something else to give Jacques - any suggestions??