Friday Foto: Cilantro Dipping Sauce

I’ll admit it now – I was utterly unprepared for this week’s Friday Foto. Last weekend, our good friends Kirk and Maury were in town visiting from Vermont. We made Mexican for dinner (an all around team effort), which left Kelli and me with a surplus of cilantro later in the week (some went into the salsa, but we hardly made a dent in the bunch). This proved a blessing in disguise, because it afforded us the opportunity to develop our own recipe for cilantro dipping sauce. We’ve been huge fans of cilantro dipping sauce for as long as we’ve been huge fans of Cuban cuisine, which is to say quite a while.

Now, normally cilantro dipping sauce would be served in a very small bowl to accompany yuca frita (which is more or less a Cuban french fry made using the yuca, aka cassava root). We had nary a yuca in the house. Nor, as you can see, did we have any large, whole corn chips. When I peeked into the bag, all I found were tiny shards of what were once corn chips. So…I had to get creative with the plating for the photo, which in the end is not quite how I’d serve the sauce, but it does do a nice job of showing off the bright green color. As for the recipe, here’s what you need to know:

1/2 bunch cilantro
2 garlic cloves
1/3 cup olive oil
Squeeze of lime
Salt and pepper

1. In a blender, puree the cilantro and garlic to form a paste.
2. Through the hole in the top of the blender, drizzle in the olive oil until the sauce is emulsified.
3. Season with salt, pepper and lime.
4. Serve in a small bowl with yuca frita (or lots of other tasty Cuban appetizers).

And for our U.S. readers, have a very Happy Fourth of July this weekend!

– Pete