Zen and the Art of Vegetable Chopping
Some notes on pico de gallo, gardening, and trying to make chicken like El Pollo Loco.
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In this post:
Pico De Gallo
El Pollo Loco-style BBQ’d Chicken
Avocado Salsa
But first, I must, like any good online recipe writer, bloviate about myself and life in general for a while.
I moved to Fresno five years ago when I started getting serious with my wife (who is from my hometown and had a child here, so couldn’t just pick up and move when we started dating). I never imagined I would one day move back to the San Joaquin Valley where I grew up, but… you know, love.
When I first started spending most of my time back here, the movie studios still did advanced screenings in Fresno and it wasn’t that a big deal. Then the pandemic happened, and everything went fully online, and it was even less of a deal. But then online screeners petered out and advanced screenings started coming back; only not in Fresno, where I had by then moved full time. So now I have to drive to San Francisco or LA (about three hours) any time I want to see a movie before you, the idiot layman.
Even now that I’m not a full-time film critic, it’s sometimes a challenge. I brought up that one of the Vanderpump restaurants in LA was closing over Slack during a pitch meeting at GQ, and one of my editors, who lives in the New York-area where most people who work at Condé Nast live, said “Hey, why don’t you go eat there and write about it?”
When I got back, he said “Oh, man, I never would’ve suggested that if I knew how far Fresno was from LA. I thought it was like one town over.”
And I thought, I know, that’s why I didn’t tell you. Which is to say that it’s hard not to wonder how many assignments I don’t get because I don’t live in a “major media market” anymore, even when I don’t try to expense anyone for gas.
I guess my point here was that moving Fresno has been great for me and probably bad for my career. Which is a stupid career, to be sure, that involves lots of watching television and movies and meeting famous people for 15 minutes over Zoom and writing about it; but is a career I nonetheless spent 15 or 16 years becoming what I thought was pretty good at, and maybe even “respected in the field.” And then media as a whole imploded and the thing I had become good at simply stopped being a job. I try not to keep bitching about this (mostly out of a simple desire to avoid redundancy), but it’s kind of a big deal when you’re living it. Much as with getting laid off and starting a Substack the same week Elon Musk decided to massively throttle any Twitter links to Substack, my timing was impeccable.
There was an upside, however. Even beyond finding love and starting a family and becoming a stepdad. You guessed it, now I can grow a whole ass vegetable garden, another thing I never imagined I would one day come to appreciate as much as I do.
This week marked a major milestone in my career as a garden grower: it was the first time I personally grew all of the ingredients for a pico de gallo, which is one of my favorite things to eat and make. I like lots of salsas, and it’s truly wild how many different ways and with how many different ingredients one can make salsa. But for my money, a nice, refreshing pico on chips kind of beats all, especially during the summers when the fresh tomatoes are growing.
It’s harder than it should be to grow all of the ingredients too, because while they’re all easy to grow in their own right, limes tend to ripen in the fall, while onions, tomatoes, and peppers ripen from spring to late summer. Kind of makes me wonder how it became a thing in the first place. Luckily, I happened to have some late limes from last season still on the tree even while the bulk won’t be ready for couple months, so maybe that’s how. I also would’ve had ripe tomatoes earlier if not for the fucking squirrels eating them, but that’s another story.
Okay, the recipe.
Pico De Gallo Ingredients
2-3 limes, or 1 lime and 1 lemon
About 4 big roma tomatoes (I had to pick mine small to keep the squirrels from eating them and ripen them in a bag, so I needed more than four)
2 jalapeños, or 1 jalapeño and 1 seranno pepper
About 1/4th of a large, white onion (those are shallots in the picture, which I used because they were smaller and thus I wouldn’t waste any, but white onion is better).
About 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
Salt to taste (probably about a teaspoon)
Directions
It actually matters what order you do this in, so pay attention. (And yeah, you could just throw this all in a food processor, but it’s not as good as the chopped version, and making little cubes of everything is kind of zen.)
Small dice your quarter onion first and add it to your bowl. Then squirt your limes and/or lemons over it and add some salt to give it a sort of half-assed pickle. I used to run the onions under cold water to remove some of the bite, but then someone pointed out that you can just use the citrus to the same end and make things easy on yourself. I think that’s right. It was a solid tip.
If you’re worried about it being overly spicy you probably want to do the two jalapeños next, since the lime and salt will remove a little a little of the sting (though not much).
Then chop up your four Roma tomatoes. My preferred method for doing this is to remove the pointy bottom. Then, setting it on the flat part you’ve just made, cut a big horizontal slab off one of the sides, removing the watery seed part as you do. You do this until you’ve basically got a little circle and four rectangular slabs, plus a core part that you can discard (or save for stock, or whatever. I know it sucks removing tomato parts this flavorful, but you also don’t want a watery-ass pico).
From there, they’re pretty easy to cut into small cubes. It’s always nice to see a pico plan come together.
Finally, you can add some chopped up cilantro and more salt to taste (if it’s bland it probably needs more salt. That’s the basic rule of thumb for basically all cooking). I think the cilantro is entirely necessary but how much you use is up to you. I used to make a separate little batch without cilantro for my brother in law because he has that genetic predisposition that makes cilantro taste like soap. But he died a while back and that’s a story I haven’t been able to write about quite yet. A story for another recipe, perhaps.
Anyway, now you have pico. For my money, one of the best all-purpose hors d’oeuvres there is. It goes great with chips, on top of tri tip or fish, on a kebab or gyro — all sorts of ways. The world is your pico oyster now, dog.
El Pollo Loco-Style Chicken
I constantly rhapsodize El Pollo Loco. When I do, people usually say “uh… cool, man” and look at me like I have bird shit on my shirt. Part of me wonders if they’re treating it like “normal fast-casual Mexican food joint” and ordering tacos or salads or something when they go there, which is wrong. Only get the chicken pieces, it’s why the restaurant exists!
To me, El Pollo Loco is like Rubio’s: they seem to have bad reputations because they both do one thing extremely well but clutter up their menus with other crap they have no business making. One makes excellent grilled chicken and one makes excellent fish tacos and neither should really do anything else and their menus should have less than five things on them like In N Out.
I order my El Pollo Loco chicken with corn tortillas and then make I little tacos slathered with avocado salsa. I do at least once a week. They rule. And it’s just grilled chicken so you don’t feel like shit afterwards.
Anyway, I’ve been trying to recreate their crunchy on the outside, juicy on the inside grilled chicken at home for years, with little success. I’ve attempted multiple “El Pollo Loco copycat!” recipes, and none have been all that great. You wouldn’t think something so simple could be so hard.
My latest attempt to recreate it isn’t a perfect match, but it’s the closest I’ve had by far and it’s pretty delicious regardless. You will need: a charcoal grill, and 24-48 hours of pre-planning. I haven’t done any corporate espionage, but based on trial and error, brining + charcoal seems like the key. The normal chicken brining ratio is about one tablespoon salt per cup of water. I know EPL’s chicken is citrus heavy, so I just swapped the water for orange juice. The rest is just a spice blend, which I’m sure isn’t exactly correct, but tastes pretty good nonetheless.
Ingredients
10 chicken thighs (bone in, skin on), or about three pounds of chicken legs.
2 cups orange juice (I chose the pulpiest kind, but I’m not sure how much it matters)
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon onion power
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon turmeric (mostly for color — I suspect EPL’s has achiote and/or food coloring)
Optional:
2-3 couple smashed garlic cloves
1/2 onion, sliced into thin half moons
Directions
Brine:
Pour your orange juice in a big measuring cup and dissolve the spices into it (whisk if you have to, man, it’s your life). Put your chicken in a ziplock bag and pour the brine over it, hopefully enough to get all the chicken covered. Zip it up, and pop it into the fridge. If it seems like the top layer of chicken is only half submerged, flip the bag over halfway through the brine time. Let it brine for at least 24, and preferably 48 hours.
Grill:
Grill it up over charcoal. I don’t know why charcoal and chicken taste so good together, but they really do. Put it skin side down first and let it cook long enough so that you can flip without it sticking. You want the grill hot enough to sizzle, but not so hot that it flames up too much. I was shooting for an hour cook time, long enough to try to dissolve and tenderize the connective tissue in the dark meat, with an internal temp of 180 or so degrees Fahrenheit.
I was working with one of those “set it and forget it”, bluetooth-enabled smoker grills, only one of the sensors melted so none of the temperature controls actually worked. And so we (my grilling pal Carlos and I) had to try to stoke the coals using a house fan. Not ideal! I probably will not be buying one of those fancy grills, even if I could afford one on my Substack/Patreon salary, which I cannot. But even with malfunctioning equipment and extremely sub-ideal conditions, the chicken came out juicy inside and decently crispy outside, which I have to think was largely due to the brine. Try it out yourself and report back.
Avocado Salsa
This is the salsa I always get at EPL. It’s distinct from the pico in that it’s more of a sauce than an hor d’oeuvre (not that you can’t still eat it with chips), and I think the hint of creaminess from the avocado goes really well with grilled chicken (with steak or pork I tend to like more acid, less creamy, but that’s just me).
Anyway, I didn’t take a picture of all the steps but it’s really easy and you can honestly kind of just freestyle it.
Ingredients
1 small-to-medium avocado, preferably soft and reasonably ripe
2 serrano peppers (approximately. you can also use jalapeños, but jalapeños are losing spice these days, so you might need three or so. I like this one pretty spicy as a complement to the creamy avocado, and because you can only get so much of it on one lil’ taco).
2 large garlic cloves
1 handful cilantro (call it a cup? just tear some off your little bunch)
3/4ths cup water
Squeeze of lime
Salt to taste (start with a teaspoon-ish, I never measure)
Optional:
Pinch of chicken bullion powder
Pinch of Tajín
Directions
Put it all in a blender and blend until smooth.
Optional:
If you have 1/2 or 1/4 of a white onion left over from your other stuff, you can fine dice it, run it under a little water to remove the bite and sprinkle it with some salt, then add it to your smooth green salsa to add some crunch. It’s not necessary, but it’s kind of nice.
The picture I have of mine sucks, but I made this one using AI and it’s actually not terrible. This is about the consistency you’re aiming for:
Let me know if you find a good recipe for green cubes. I think that’s a cow’s small intestine in the background.
More dad recipe content! That's the stuff, esp. for those of us who don't want to watch the same Insta video 45 times to fully understand the recipe, or suffer through 2500 words of ispo lorum. 10/10
I'm allergic to tomatoes- pause for sympathetic groans - but make loads of 3-ingredient salads with cilantro* as the main leafy green, with lemon juice and white pepper as dressing.
Anyway I read this whole thing and felt like I got great return on investment and learned something about whatever a Fresno is.
*Or coriander as my people call it.