Plum Pico

What do you do when you go to make your pico de gallo for your Brazilian steak night and realize you’re out of garden tomatoes?  Well.  You can either go out and get some more tomatoes OR improvise.

Clearly, I improvised.  (Do you know me but at all?)

I had a couple more plums leftover from when I made the Plum Pizza and Plum Pie.  They had been hiding in my fridge and poor things were forgotten about.  So my brain wheels started spinning and I had some fun.

In a normal pico (sometimes called salsa fresca) you’d find diced, raw tomatoes, onions, usually chilies of some kind, cilantro, salt and lime juice.  It’s basically a fresh, uncooked ‘salsa’.  We make it a lot in the summer and all the time when we have this one particular steak meal.  And I was gonna make the plum pico the same exact way as the traditional tomato kind, but turns out… I was also out of cilantro.  So… I decided to go a different herbal route and OH MY GOODNESS was it good.

I kept everything else fairly the same but used fresh parsley and basil instead of cilantro, and it was so so good.  The plums have a wonderful tartness that is usually hard to detect when you’re using it in sweet dishes, so it was a perfect topper for the rich and savory, salty steak.

I would make this even for a twist on chips and salsa for a party.  I’m so incredibly pleased with how it turned out.

Also?  How cute is Plum Pico?

Adorbs.

P L U M   P I C O

makes roughly 1 cup

In a medium bowl, combine the following…

2 plums, diced– ripe but not mushy (You want some firmness to them so they hold their shape.  I used black plums because it’s what I had but dragon plums would also work.)

~1/4 cup minced, raw onion

small handful each of fresh parsley and basil leaves, minced

juice of 1 lime

kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste

Mix well and taste.  Adjust seasoning if necessary.  You want it fresh, light, a little tart and salty, and naturally sweet.

Serve with chips

…OR over a perfectly cooked steak with garlicky black beans and roasted, sweet plantains.

Thanks for reading!  Have a killer day… XOXO