Making Salsa While Drinking Tequila!

Ruben has been a chef and restaurant owner for years here in Puerto Vallarta, my hometown. He had his own Greek restaurant, worked with his sister who owns Coco’s Kitchen, and now is head chef at Eclecticos. In his spare time, he offers cooking classes.

Some friends and I took one of Ruben’s classes where we prepared several salsas from scratch along with a couple of side dishes. We sipped some amazing tequilas while we roasted, chopped, mixed, and ground. After all, this was a lot of work. Imagine cooking like this every day? And no, I cannot seem to remember the names of those tequilas.

This was a fun five-hour adventure held in my friend’s fabulous Mexican kitchen. She is a collector of original and unusual kitchenware and utensils from many places in Mexico. We were honored to use some of her volcanic stone molcajetes for grinding and mixing the different salsa ingredients. Molcajetes are typically made from the porous basalt rock of the volcanic regions in Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Michoacán. Their rough surface is perfect for grinding down ingredients and spices.

Each salsa had its own molcajete which has been flavored over the years from the many salsas…