Salsa de fresa con totopos dulces

This is blender salsa, but you can dice the strawbs for a pico de gallo style salsa or bash the holy living f**ck out of them in your molcajete

Because it's summer and strawberries are the best summer fruit ever, I thought I'd share this lighthearted take on tortilla chips and salsa.

I'm not great at desserts, so when I'm planning a three-course menu I really struggle with the finale.

But this "dish" is ridiculously easy to make and the comic transformation of what is usually a savoury snack into a pudding almost makes it a show-stopper.

The key element is the strawberry salsa.

I came up with this because my daughter hates chiles ("They're too spicy ") but she LOVES strawberries. So I tried to think of a way she could enjoy chips and salsa.

She's four by the way.

Basically everything I would put in the classic Mexican tomato and chile salsa has a corresponding sweet ingredient in the strawberry salsa.

• Instead of tomatoes, I use strawberries (duh).
• Instead of diced white onion I use diced apple.
• Instead of fresh cilantro (coriander) I use mint.
• And instead of chiles I use chiles.

Ha!

Seriously though: you can leave chiles out of this one. HOWEVER, if you want to use chiles, try a bit of habanero. It's fecking hot, but the fruity flavour is ideal for this recipe. Just take it easy if you or your guests aren't hardcore chileheads.

So now that you have all this stuff, make it into salsa more or less the same way you would make standard (raw) tomato and chile salsa.

Then make the totopos (tortilla chips).

For these I uncharacteristically use flour tortillas.

First I preheat the oven to 160 C.

Then I cut the tortillas into triangular wedges using a pizza cutter (I kid you not).

Then I melt some butter and brush a baking tray with the butter using a pastry brush.

Then I place the tortilla wedges on the tray and brush them with more butter.

Then I dust them with ground cinnamon and sugar and bake them for about 20 minutes or until crisp.

(You can deep-fry them instead, in which case you would have to use oil, and dust them with cinnamon and sugar after frying, before they cool. But I never deep-fry my totopos.)

Y provecho!

I don't think they really eat these in Mexico, but they are still the bomb. 

I like to put a few totopos on everyone's plate and put the bowl of salsa in the middle, so it becomes a sharing activity and promotes socializing. 

You should also have a bowl of extra totopos to hand, because even after the strawberry salsa is finished, your guests will want more of these. In fact, so will you, then next day.