(Click here for Mark's Salsa recipe.)
George Costanza of the show Seinfeld has no doubt what belongs
on every dinner table. "Salsa," he states flatly, "is now the number one
condiment in America." Mark Viette agrees. He doesn't live in Manhattan
but in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, outside Fishersville. With
his parents, André and Claire, he runs a well-known perennials nursery
that bears his father's name. Mark is just as much an artist in the
kitchen as he is in the garden. That's where salsa comes in.
At home, he tends a backyard vegetable garden designed for one
purpose--to supply the heirloom tomatoes and fiery peppers that flavor
his legendary salsa. I ask Claire how a guy who has devoted his life to
planting, grooming, and hybridizing flowers finds utter fulfillment
dicing tomatoes.
"Mark loves to cook. From the time he was little, he was always in
the kitchen. Of course," she adds with a laugh, "when he was really young,
some of the things he fixed didn't always turn out edible." Obviously,
Mark has come a long way. Around Fishersville, his salsa is more than a
dish--it's an event.
Variety--The Spice of Salsa
Mark grows more than 40 selections of
both tomatoes and peppers, some rare and some common. To find them, he
canvasses local nurseries and scours mail-order catalogs. Such a wide
assortment furnishes the rainbow of colors, flavors, and degrees of heat
on which a good salsa depends.
"Plant 20 selections of something rather than 3," he urges. "By
using one or two plants of each, you can extend the harvest and minimize
pest problems. Besides, one big plant can provide all the fruit of a
particular kind you'll ever need."
