Onions and cilantro in lime juice and vinegar.
Salsa Criolla
Cuisine: Peruvian
2 Red Onions 3 Limes White Wine Vinegar Cilantro Thinly slice two red onions -- the shape you're looking for is half-moons here. Place in salt water for 10 minutes, then rinse. Add the juice of 3 limes, and half this amount of white wine vinegar. Add chopped cilantro and let rest for 15 minutes.
The Story So Far
K and I live in San Jose, CA, America’s 10th largest city (were you even aware of it?). Long ago, in the murky days of the late 2000s, there used to be a series of standalone movie theaters in big domes, four of them on Winchester Blvd (home of the famous Mystery House) and one on Saratoga.
We had tickets for a night time screening at the most stand-alone of them all, the Century 24, and K decided to look up nearby restaurants for dinner beforehand. And directly across the street was a Peruvian restaurant called Isabella’s. I grew up in a very white bread, hamburger helper, rice-a-roni household, and while Katie grew up a little more adventurous in South Florida, Peruvian food didn’t make her radar. But our feeling about food is that if someone eats it somewhere, it’s probably worth a shot — most people, most places in the world, have figured out how to enjoy eating.
Isabella’s, by the way, is not just a Peruvian restaurant, but one where you can get some Chifa dishes. Chifa is Peruvian’s version of Chinese food, made with the ingredients found in older Peruvian dishes. I forget what K had, but I ordered Lomo Saltado, an amazing dish for another day, and became “meat high.”
One of the things she ordered was this amazing onion dish, which is sometimes a relish or an accompaniment, and sometimes served as a full salad.
It’s amazing.
It brightens up anything, thanks to the lime juice and vinegar. It’s part of a delicious national sandwich, our version of which is posted here. I make a big batch of this stuff every once in a while just to keep around.
I’ll grant you that you have to like onions, but if you like them even slightly, you’re going to want to try this.
Variations
Sometimes this is spicy — so a little bit of any fresh chili pepper you like, chopped fine, could be added.
A little diced tomato changes the character of this from a relish to more of a salad
I used white wine vinegar here — some recipes call for white vinegar, and I’ve made it successfully with red wine vinegar. You’re going to want lime juice to be the star, so I’d experiment with the vinegar first.
See it in action
Egg is Food Glue 