As a lover of cilantro and onions, this salsa highlights both. Salsa and chips are critical to the success of any Mexican restaurant, along with the margaritas. If they can jack those three things out of the park, most customers will come back. This salsa is the first step towards your home run.
If you can, and typically this is only during those mid-summer months, get 8-10 ripe tomatoes. The rest of the year, you’ll have to make do with a large can of whole tomatoes. Chop them up; throw them in a large bowl. Mince a large white or yellow onion and add it. Dice a jalapeno pepper into small bits, and mix. Sprinkle in some vinegar. Cut up a bunch of fresh cilantro after pulling off the bigger parts of the stems. Put that in the bowl with everything else.
Fresh garlic is the best, but you can use the already-chopped garlic in a jar. Put a tablespoon of it in. Mix all of this up. Taste it. You may like to sprinkle in some sugar or add more garlic, or another jalapeno pepper if you’re a fire eater. If so, do it a little bit at a time and stir it all up and taste it again so it meets your specifications. Once you get it where you want it, dig in.
This salsa will dominate your pre-meal activities. People will inhale it. In all likelihood, the entire bowl will be devastated by a small tribe of hungry humans before the main course is served. Then they’ll ask for me. You could do worse.