Salsa

For those unafraid of the bite of hot stuff, this brief guide to salsas offers flavors for a summer's worth of repasts. ``Salsas are deceptively simple in appearance and yet must balance opposing textures, flavors, and spices,'' observes Birosik ( The Burrito Book ). Perhaps in pursuit of balance, she varies her palette with sweetness and bravado, the cooked and the raw, and even ventures into the territory of the nonalcoholic salsa cocktail. After explaining the sources and uses of common salsa ingredients (from achiote to yellow tomatoes), she lights into salsa proper: Mexican, East Indian, ``drunken'' (including tequila), fruit-filled, garlic-engendered, Southwestern, grilled, and water-chestnut varieties. There is a ``terrifying turnip salsa,'' so named because a friend of the author's ``threatens to make her offspring eat an entire bowl of this salsa'' as a punishment for their crimes. There is also a salt-free kind, and even a chili-free version. While her swaggeringly cute salsa sobriquets may smite the senses, Birosik's treats will probably waken them again. (July)