Salsa de Tomatillo con Aguacate

(No... I have not spontaneously started speaking Spanish, but I felt fancy giving you the real name for the forthcoming recipe!)

A Mexican restaurant called Estella's opened up about 10 feet from our office building last summer. I actually don't care too much for the food, but oh, let me tell you about their creamy, spicy green dip! To a novice, it looks like a super smooth guacamole dip. But then you scoop up a nice dollup and to your surprise, it is tangy and complex and super spicy! I usually avoid really spicy food because I am a wimp can't taste anything beyond the heat. Not so with this sauce! It inspires me to bravery and I will sit and eat it until my eyes are tearing and my nose is dripping and my ears are smoking because it is just so incredibly YUMMY!

(Forgive me for being a little excessive with my exclamation points! This sauce gets me a little excited!)

As you might imagine, I have been intensely curious as to what is in this strange sauce. I have been entertaining visions of dancing homemade enchiladas smothered in this mysterious green sauce. But alas, the staff at Estella's have been closed-lipped! It was somebody's grandma's homemade recipe and they won't even tell me the basic ingredients.

So a few weeks ago, I embarked on a quest to see if I could figure it out on my own.

My first attempt was complete failure. I tried a base of mayo and sour cream and added in jalepenos, cilantro, avocado, garlic, lime juice and just a hint of wasabi. It was a decent sauce in its own right (especially on some broiled tuna steaks), but it was absolutely nothing like my beloved mystery sauce. After this attempt, I concluded that there should not be a "cream" in the base of of the sauce and that there should not be any wasabi.

After a few more completely necessary tasting exercises (wink, wink), I tried again last weekend. I have been "Googling" things like "creamy, spicy, green, mexican sauce" with no luck. It occurred to me one day that I have often seen tomatillos in Mexican food recipes but I have never tasted them. Since the mystery sauce has a flavor that I can't quite name, it made sense to me to start exploring some ingredients that I am not quite familiar with.

BINGO!

The recipe below, unfortunately, is not my mystery sauce, but after tasting tomatillos for the first time, I am certain that they make up one of the main ingredients in the longed-for sauce and I will keep experimenting with them. Despite the fact that the recipe below is not quite what I was looking for, it was surprisingly delicious and I have gotten all my coworkers hooked on it. Especially if you have never tried a tomatillo, I would encourage you to try out this recipe. They are tangy and tart, almost like a lime but without the "bite". I will definitely be exploring more ways to play with them.

Salsa de Tomatillo con Aguacate (Avocado)

2 garlic cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 small vidalia or other sweet onion
2-3 serrano chiles (I find serrano chilis to be a little unpredictable so start with one and increase if you want more heat)
1/2 lb tomatillos (6-8 average-sized), cut into quarters
1 ripe avocado

- Remove the tomatillo husks, rinse them off and cut them into quarters.
- Remove the stem and seeds from the chiles.
- In a food processor or blender, process the garlic and salt into a paste.
- With the processor running, add the onion, chiles, tomatillos and avocado. Puree until smooth and ENJOY!

I will be continuing my quest to re-create Estella's mystery green sauce and if I stumble on any more yummy recipes on the way, you can be sure that I will share!