Dining Around with Gene Burns

Gene Burns: Tomorrow is Superbowl Sunday. What better weekend to talk about having a great bowl of salsa and some chips.

Mrs. A, who’s Leah Aguayo, joins us to talk about her salsa and the great story that goes with it. Leah, welcome to Dining Around.

Leah Aguayo: Thank you so much for having me.

Gene: We’re delighted. It’s such a great story. So you’re a ceramics teacher. And your husband, Rafael, is a ceramics teacher.

Leah: We’ve been together since we were 15 in high school.

Gene: Both interested in ceramics?

Leah: My husband plays music, and he was a music major and then switched over to ceramics after meeting Al Johnson our professor at UC Santa Cruz. I’m at Saratoga High School. My husband is at Los Gatos High School.

Gene: You used to make this salsa for yourself, for your family.

Leah: Teaching ceramics, I have always rewarded my students with cooking food, which is my passion. Probably 10 – 12 years ago I started bringing salsa into my classroom. If they were behaving, they got food. If they were misbehaving, then they had to clean the room. So it was a reward.

Five years ago, this Superbowl, tomorrow, will be our fifth anniversary. Five years ago my third period class said, Mrs. A, you have to market this.

Gene: One of the best ways to determine the quality of a product is to look at where it’s available. Because you don’t get into the kinds of stores you’re in unless you have a top quality product.

A couple of things make your salsa different. You really like cilantro in the salsa.

Leah: Yes, I find that in my tastings and demos that there’s probably one out of 500 that do not like cilantro. The majority of people absolutely love it. And what’s different about my salsa is that it’s blended, loaded with cilantro, and has no raw onions.

If my husband were here, he would say it’s a flavor progression in your mouth. The sweetness of the tomatoes, the freshness of the cilantro and then -- whoop! there it is -- the heat of the garlic and the jalapeños.

It’s just so much fun to be at a tasting or an event and watch people. I will stare at them until they give me the, “Mmmmmm! This is good!”

You were talking about the SF Wine Competition. I’ll be there. I was there last year and it was an awesome event.

Gene: Do you have a website, a list of your classes, locations for salsa -- all that’s there?

Leah: Yes, I have my website, which is www.mrsafamous.com, but I’m also with a marketing partnership, Savor California, www.SavorCalifornia.com. Click on Sauces and Condiments, go down to Santa Cruz County, and my page will come up. There’s a full list of my stores, my story, there’s a picture, and then upcoming events with Savor California.

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