Salsas are at the centre stage of Mexican Food. A taco is not a taco without a good salsa, so there are so many recipes for them it will make your head explode! One funny thing I discovered last year is that a lot of people seem to think that chopping fresh tomatoes and adding onion, chilli and other raw stuff makes a salsa... In Mexico, mostly all our salsas are cooked. What Irish people refer to as 'salsa' is really a salad for us, a sort of pico de gallo that we use to garnish or accompany a dish with. Every family has their favourite salsas, the ones that have been passed from mother to daughter for generations! I've share a few recipes here before, like this Red Salsa & Pico de Gallo, this creamy Green Tomatillo Salsa or this super hot dried arbol chili one. When I do a cooking demonstration, I always like to show people how quick and easy it is to make a salsa from scratch. Today, I want to share my most precious salsa recipe, one that has been cooked in my family since I can remember: Salsa de Chile Maduro or Ripen Red Chili Salsa.

Growing up, there use to be a bowl of this at home all the time, it is my brother's favourite and its bright orange colour and sharp taste indicates how ferociously hot and incredibly addictive this salsa is. Definitely not for the faint hearted. Traditionally, the Ramirez make this salsa with ripen Serrano peppers, which as their name implies, are chiles grown in the 'Sierras' (the mountains) in the central regions of Mexico. It is slightly hotter and narrower than a jalapeño pepper, crispier and, in its ripen red form, very flavoursome. Together with the piquin variety, they are the most consumed chilies in Mexico. I've attempted to make it with little red Thai chilies, but it was so hot it became inedible for us, so I ended up making it with the regular red Kenyan chili variety found in the markets in Ireland. You, however, are allowed to experiment with different types of chilies until you find the one you like the most.

This post is going to be an odd one. It is way over due, it should have been posted on the 21st of March. On the first day of spring, yet as many of you know, my mother fell suddenly very ill in Mexico that week and it's been a hell of a month since. She's recovering well now, thank God, but the worry filled my days and weeks and the anxiety of being so far away and helpless added to it. So please forgive me for posting this now. It was written then, but life took over...

This day last year I lost my best friend John to suicide. It was a gloriously sunny Wednesday and I should have met him that day, but I had gone home with a bad headache so did not think strange that he hadn't texted to arrange. We used to meet on Wednesdays for lunch or for a cuppa after work. He did not ring that day, instead he drove to Howth and walked into the sea. I will never forget the phone call that evening, driving to the hospital where he had been taken after someone alerted the authorities. Walking into A&E just to discovered that there are places, small chapel like rooms, where bodies are kept for a few hours for people to say their good byes. He was laying there, sleep like, still him but not there any more. His wife was distraught, we were all distraught.

And every Wednesday since I yearn for time to go back, every Wednesday I wish I could know then what I know now. Every Wednesday that passes by I feel angry with myself for not having noticed, for not being there. I miss him. A year on and I still think of all those wonderful years he was in my life, a dear friend, a brother, a rock. We used to share countless cups of tea and the odd glass of wine in my kitchen, he loved my baking and my taste for cheese. He always managed to get me exactly what I didn't want for Christmas and he never missed my birthday (which most my friends always do as it is too close to Christmas Day). I don't have one single photo of the two of us together, he was always the one taking all the cameras and snapping all the photos. Avid reader, green fingered, politics mad, a true environmentalist and a great listener. A man so unglamorous that despite being financially comfortable, he wore runners with a hole on them for at least a year! He had a gift with people, he was trusted and trustworthy.

And it has taken me a long time to come to terms with the loss and the huge waste of a beautiful life; it has taken a lot to deal with the terrible guilt and the what ifs that lingered for weeks and months after he was gone. He was my best friend and for weeks I would jump at the sound of the house bell in the evenings: 'It must be John' - I would think, only to walk two steps towards the door and realising it couldn't be him. He was dead.

A native of Co. Donegal, he always told me not to go to his village unless it was summer time; sadly I finally made it to his part of Ireland and I made it there in the spring time. A month after his funeral I walked the streets of this little village tucked away in a busy fishing bay. He rests facing the sea. He chose the sea to go, feels right that he rests there... and every Wednesday I say a little prayer, every Wednesday I remind myself that wherever he is, he is at peace... and so Wednesday is gone and hope springs again, as I say good bye to a dearest and beloved friend.