Let’s give credit where it’s due - the idea for this came from chef Renee Erickson’s Westward restaurant in Seattle a few years ago. Washington state cherries are wonderful, and they were serving a cherry hazelnut salsa macha with roast chicken that was amazing. I was already a huge fan of salsa macha as Staplehouse in Atlanta had been making their own version for a while, and it was an, um, staple in our house. Anyway, I played around with recreating something similar to Westward’s version and settled on this - basically follow Tejal Rao’s recipe from the NYTimes - Salsa Macha Recipe - but make these changes: cut the number of ancho chiles in half (to reduce heat), sub in guajillo for arbol chilies (again to reduce heat), dial back on garlic a bit, use hazelnuts instead of peanuts, add 4Tbs pepitas (because I like them), cider vinegar as the vinegar (to add a touch of sweetness and rounder flavor), 1T sorghum instead of 1tsp brown sugar, and add a cup of good fresh cherries (or frozen off season - dry cherries get too gummy, I tried). I’ve done variations of this several times, mostly to pair with duck, and it works REALLY well. The sweet and fruity aspects of it limit its usage vs regular salsa macha (which is amazing with scrambled eggs for example - this is NOT), so I’m really only doing this with duck or chicken or lamb (or a grain dish of some sort - it went great with a pearl couscous dish with ras el hanout and dried fruit). Enjoy! Report back!
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Didn’t you make this for Duckfest? I seem to recall enjoying it very much but parts of that night remain a bit murky.
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I’m pretty sure I did a duck foie gras dirty rice for duck fest, and served a version of this salsa macha with duck breasts at my house one time!
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