Salsa: It’s Music to His Taste

Ray Marshall has a doctorate in the culinary arts, experience in the classical preparations of European food and all skills for preparing the haughtiest of cuisines.

Yet he sees himself more cook than chef. A domestic, he says. Someone who builds meals like mother, a man who prefers eating to dining because viande et pommes de terre remain meat and potatoes in any language.

“Look at Mexican food,” he suggests. “Nothing glamorous, but what a heritage. It began as food for survival. Women cooked anything that grew or whatever wandered through the backyard.

“Adapting to what was available has given us an infinite variety of Mexican food. There isn’t the same chili in any two towns. Salsa on one side of the river is different to salsa on the other.”

Therein his speciality. Mexican food. Cabrito as prepared in Nuevo Leon. Sonoran menudo. The pozole and caldo de carne of Jalisco.

“Look at restaurants,” he continues. “Generally speaking, people like to eat the things they’re accustomed to, whatever food their mother or wife made for them.

“So the secret of a good restaurant is to recognize what customers want and cater to that. In a sense, customers own the restaurant and hire you to run it for them.”

In 1960, by this formula, the customers hired Marshall to open a small restaurant on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. It grew to a 41-restaurant chain--to the Acapulco y Los Arcos Mexican restaurants, which Marshall sold in 1983. For $8.8 million.

At 72, there’s little retirement for Marshall. He has other restaurants to counsel. There’s a library of 2,000 cookbooks to maintain . . . investments to tend and appearances to make and judging to perform . . . and an appearance Sunday to judge a chile salsa contest at the Fiesta y Cultura in Griffith Park.

There will be Latin jazz, salsa music and dancing at the fiesta, sponsored by KVEA-TV. But the true heat, the ultimate piquancy, the fullest creativity will be with the Table Salsa Stakes.

“Salsa,” breathes Marshall. “It’s a sauce. An appetizer. A condiment. There’s salsa of pumpkin seeds for chicken and fish. Butter and nutmeg salsa for eggs. Almond salsa for rabbit, tongue and chicken.

“Unfortunately, the salsa most gringos know is what you get with tortilla chips.”

True. Yet even that may be considered a pre-Columbian art form. In some areas, it is a cure-all, the chicken soup of Mexico. Perfectionists still roast their fresh peppers over an open fire before grinding them in a molcajete. Fresh salsa made one minute and eaten the next is best, say the sons of Sinaloa. Nada de eso, claim the men of Michoacan. Salsa must be left for days, to mature, to build body, to become a bola de fuego.

Marshall’s favorite recipe came from Francesca Carbajal, who cooked at his first restaurant. Carbajal learned it from her mother in Guadalajara, who obtained it from her mother and so on--presumably back to Aztec cooks and green tomatoes plucked from their floating gardens.

“Francesca never had a written recipe, because it was all in her head,” Marshall recalls. “So I had to watch her, write it down and estimate her pinch of this and a half handful of that into the correct measurements until my salsa fresca tasted like her salsa fresca. “

It goes something like this: Dice two large, red, juicy, tomatoes. Add 1/2 cup of diced, teary onion. One teaspoon of pungent California garlic, mashed in 1/2 teaspoon of salt. One tablespoon of chopped, aromatic cilantro. Three fresh, yellow, chopped, muy picante jalapeno chiles.

Add one-quarter teaspoon of sugar. Mix well. Add a little tomato juice. A su salud.

“That’s salsa,” Marshall says. “A piece of Mexican culture.”

Add another piece to the pedigree.

The new owners of Acapulco y Los Arcos restaurants no longer use Marshall’s original salsa fresca.

That elevates his recipe to the status of Los Angeles history.

Fiesta y Cultura--1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday at Griffith Park--to benefit the Olympic Youth Soccer League. Admission free. Information: (818) 502-5700.