Texas Food Explorer Volume 2: Pico de Gallo, Chimichangas and Cilantro
Now Ubiquitous, the semi-dry salsa from south of the border is a somewhat new addition to the Texan palate
(Another in a series of posts on the evolution of Texas foodways. More in this vein are linked below.)
I can’t say when, exactly, I was first pecked by the rooster’s beak (to translate pico’s full name), but it was some time in the early 80s. Up to then, your pre-meal bowl of chips came with a thin red salsa little removed from a pureed tomato with a hint of spice. Then you started seeing the occasional green salsa, and then chunky pico.
It seems to arrived alongside the advent of cilantro in Mexican food in Texas, and to me it’s those same coriander leaves that differentiates pico from salsa fresca. Even if pico and salsa fresca are sometimes used interchangeably, to me, it’s pico of there is cilantro in it and salsa fresca if it does not.
The earliest newspaper mention I could find for pico de gallo comes via an AP report picked up in a September 1976 edition of the Baytown Sun. It’s a strange little story made weirder by the fact that it completely contradicts its headline.
Which was:
‘Fajitas’ Popular Dish in Dallas Restaurants
Now you might suppose the story would revolve around how “fajitas” — the quotation marks indicate how unfamiliar fajitas were in 1976 — were in high demand in the Mexican restaurants of Dallas, Texas.
You’d be wrong.
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