Celebrating Salsa

Hold the mayo.

And please hold the catsup and the mustard too. Those traditional sandwich and burger condiments will be unacceptable, downright declasse--at least during the fourth annual Salsa Festival on Saturday and Sunday in downtown Oxnard.

The festival, a celebration of the increasingly popular chile-onion-tomato dish, will include a 5K run, entertainment, food, arts and crafts and cooking competitions. More than 7,000 people attended the event last year, a sizable turnout that comes as no surprise to fans of the food.

“You can eat a spoonful of salsa, but you wouldn’t eat a spoonful of mustard, would you?” said Tom Baker, a Moorpark High School instructor and avid salsa supporter. “What can you do with mustard? You can throw it on canvas and say the cat painted it.”

Baker’s distaste for mustard is inversely proportionate to his enthusiasm for salsa. As an entrant in the festival’s amateur salsa-making contest, Baker will share his passion for salsa as well as his own recipe with the public.

“The reason I make salsa is to go with chips, with eggs, with turkey burgers,” said Baker, a math and science teacher who transfers his chemistry skills to his salsa-making hobby.

“Most condiments represent one aspect of the [taste] spectrum, but to me salsa is full spectrum--from a little bit of salty taste to a sour taste to a juicy taste. It gets to your taste buds and your nose,” Baker said. “You’ve got so many things happening there.”

Baker began experimenting with salsa about four years ago, at a time when many Americans were taking an interest in the spicy dish. In a big way.

“In about 1994, salsa [sales] exceeded ketchup in gross consumer dollars,” said Joel Gregory, a partner in the Texas-based Magnolia Media Group, publisher of Chile Pepper Magazine. “We used to have half a dozen salsas marketed across the country. Now we have thousands.”

Gregory, a home salsa-maker himself, credits the salsa surge to a variety of factors, beginning with its relative health benefits.

“First of all there’s the search in America for low-fat, healthy condiments,” Gregory said. “Mayonnaise is out of a lot of diets. Other condiments are either fat-based or in some other way out of favor.”

A growing interest in gourmet and exotic foods, Gregory said, also has contributed to the rising popularity of salsas, sauces, marinades, chutneys and other piquant food enhancers. As Americans travel abroad to Thailand, Jamaica and other spice-loving locales, Gregory said, they often come home and start looking for something of similar heat and zest.

“It’s addictive,” he said of spicy cuisine. “When people begin it, they love it.”

The growing interest in salsas and hot sauces is illustrated not only in the increase in demand, but also in the increase in supply. During the last 10 years, Gregory said, the number of manufacturers of zesty condiments has increased tenfold, to about 5,000, in the United States.

Similarly, spicy food festivals, like Oxnard’s salsa celebration, are becoming more numerous and more populous.

“There’s been an explosion in the number of trade and consumer shows and festivals; they are increasing by the month,” Gregory said. “There used to be a handful of hot and spicy events; now we find them in virtually every urban center--north and south--outside the traditional Sunbelt.”

While salsas are getting more common, they are also getting more varied. Gregory said the trend has passed through the hot, hotter, hottest stages and is now into the melding of flavors.

“Particularly with peppers and fruit,” he said. “Like chipotle [smoked jalepen~o] and papaya or chipotle and peach.”

This experimentation may be good news to the average taster, but at least one traditionalist isn’t at all pleased.

“To me, salsa is tomatoes, peppers, onions, cilantro, but it has to be hot,” said Oxnard’s Mary Lou Guerrero, who will put her salsa to the test at the festival’s cooking competition. “There was something in [the contest] last year that was raspberries and jalapen~os. We do not put sweet ingredients into our salsa; it’s just hot.”

Though salsa may be new to many folks, Guerrero said she has been eating and preparing salsa for 43 years, since she was 12.

“I’m Hispanic. We eat salsa every day, and the hotter the better,” Guerrero said. “Growing up eating salsa I trained my flavor buds to eat hot stuff. So did my son. He was eating salsa at age 2.”

BE THERE

The fourth annual Salsa Festival will run from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday on A Street between 4th and 6th streets, in downtown Oxnard. The festival will include food tasting and demonstrations, a carnival, music and a 5K run, which starts at 8 a.m. Saturday. Free admission. (805) 247-0197 or 385-7545.