Pico de gallo I (Mexican fresh sauce)

This is the one most people know as "salsa." Salsa just means sauce, and there is a whole gamut of fresh (raw) sauces in Mexican cuisine, more akin to relish. This pico de gallo is quintessential Mexican, not only for how common it is in Mexico, but also because of the ingredients of Mexican origin (tomatoes and chiles), and it contains the colors of the Mexican flag: red, white and green.

Ingredients

1 large tomato, peeled, seeded and diced

1/2 white onion, diced

1-2 serrano chiles or 1 jalapeño, chopped

2 sprigs coriander, leafs and thin stalks only, chopped

salt, to taste

splash of the juice from pickled jalapeños or vinegar

Mix all the ingredients together.and serve immediately

Notes

You might not want to go to the effort of peeling and seeding the tomato--it will still be fine. I prefer to remove the seeds and juice, since the sauce will create its own juice with the addition of the vinegar.

The sauce should have some kick to it, but of course you can control the heat by how much chile you use, and whether you include the seeds or not. I like to have the chiles a bit chunky, like the tomato and onion. However, that means that you might bite into a chile and have more heat than you bargained for. You can chop the chiles finely to avoid this from happening.

Instead of white vinegar, I use the vinegar from pickeld jalapeños. If you don't have fresh chiles, you could use pickled jalapeños, instead.

You can make the sauce even more delicious if you add diced avocado.