Q: What advice would you give to people who are looking to be happy?
A: For starters, learn how to cook.
—Charles Simic, Poet Laureate, interviewed in the New York Times Magazine
This was the year of pebre verde (green salsa) for me in Chile. I adore the traditional tomato-based salsa versions: finely chopped tomato, ají (the ubiquitous, pale-green Chilean pepper, called ají verde or just ají, which is similar to an Italian pepper but smaller and narrower, with a unique taste all its own), cilantro, and onion, with lots of lemon juice, a bit of olive oil, and salt; eaten before a meal, slopped up with the small, everyday Chilean yeast breads; or slathered on whatever else one might be eating at the time. And there are many different versions: at a Brazilian restaurant in Las Condes, mango- and piña-based pebres, for example. Every pebre adds freshness, a taste of living-in-the-present, to the meal.
A morning's haul from the Feria Fluvial and a favorite bakery, Mi Pueblita, in Valdivia.But, this year, I fell in love with the ají verde–based pebre, sin tomates.
(1) At a seafood restaurant in the Mercado Central in Santiago: Chilean peppers, finely chopped, along with equally finely chopped onion and cilantro, flavored with lots of lemon juice, salt, and a little olive oil, and then slopped up with bread ahead of eel soup, caldio de cóngrio, the dish Pablo Neruda celebrated with an ode.
(2) At Café Hausmann, the minuscule German café where the Valdivian specialty, crudos, is king: a smashed layer of raw, deep-red, sweet, grass-fed beef on a thin piece of white yeast bread, topped with a bit of raw onion and, then, for Chileans, slathered with a healthy squeeze of fresh lemon juice (if one can say “slathered” about lemon juice), and a bit of salt. A dollop of their pepper pebre adds a delicious sharpness to the crudos. This is a pebre made of Chilean peppers, maybe a bit of onion, very pale green overall, with some salt, lemon juice, olive oil, and nothing else. No tomato, not even cilantro. A travesty, possibly, if you love the tomato-based pebre, but nevertheless delicious.
(3) At Eduardo’s aunt Kika’s in Barrio Ñuñoa in Santiago for lunch: chopped Chilean peppers, garlic (no onion), cilantro, lemon juice, salt. Yet another variation.
When I tried making versions of this pebre myself, on New Year’s, at Lucy’s, at our hostal on Pérez Rosales, it was initially, invariably, much too hot. The Chilean ají verde peppers vary in hotness but usually fall in the middle range, like Anaheims or New Mexican green chilies here, but they seemed to take on extra hotness initially in the pebre. However, after sitting for a time, the juices of the peppers are drawn out by the salt, and the taste softens and ripens to a delicious, sweeter, more gentle hotness. Fantastic and addictive. Here’s a recipe for the United States:
Pebre Verde
2 Anaheim peppers (or 1 Italian green pepper and 1 jalapeño), seeds removed
¼ to ½ of a large, sweet onion (or 2-3 cloves garlic instead)
½ to all the juice of a lemon
¼ to ½ c. chopped cilantro (optional)
1 T. olive oil
plenty of salt to taste
Slice the peppers as finely as possible. Then rotate the cut strips 90º and chop again, to make very fine dice. Do the same with the onion. The amount of onion is entirely dependent on your taste; I like to chop a pile about as big as the pile of peppers. Squeeze the lemon and add juice along with pulp. Add chopped cilantro, or not; both versions have their virtues. Add the olive oil and salt. The salt draws out the pepper juice, which is really the essential taste of pebre. Enjoy with chips or bread or on potatoes or omelets, or with any other food.
Note: The more traditional tomato-y pebre includes 1 medium or 2 small ripe tomatoes, very finely chopped, and about half as much pepper. It's a juicier pebre, and the cilantro is probably not optional.
—Jane
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