In cities and towns throughout much of Texas, the holiday table isn’t complete without a family recipe for salsa, which enlivens everything from turkey to tamales. And in the Big Bend badlands near Presidio, few families gather with as much gusto as the Trevizos, who have roots here going back generations.
Normally, the Trevizo ranch-style menu focuses on rice, beans, salad, homemade flour tortillas, frosted sheet cake, and asado de puerco—an aromatic stew made with cubes of pork simmered in a red chile sauce over an open flame. Still, it’s the special family salsa, a pungent, tongues-aflame mixture fine-tuned by Rodrigo Trevizo (brother to seven Trevizos, uncle to dozens more), that always gets the fiesta started.
Rodrigo (aka Tío Rod) lives on the family homestead between dry Cibolo Creek and…
