Sometimes, one little tweak in technique or process using the same set of ingredients makes a noticeable difference in the result.

Juicy, tangy, fresh tomatoes on your salad are one flavor experience quite different from the mellowed, sweet, almost caramelized flavor of the roasted or stewed ones on your pasta. The marinade that's grilled (and caramelized) on your steak or pork chop is a totally other, yet complementary, thing to the raw marinade used as a dipping sauce...

And pico de gallo - with the separate bits of savory onion, hot jalapeno, zesty tomato and fragrant cilantro, all steeped in the refreshing juice of fresh lime - transforms into a luscious, piquant salsa suitable for dressing, dipping or marinating, when blended and emulsified with a little bit of oil.

While this blended version is not necessarily superior to the chunky stuff, I've found that one advantage to blending/emulsification is that the stuff keeps its flavor and integrity longer than pico de gallo, which sweats a lot of liquid within a few hours of making, throwing off the flavor balance and altering the texture of the individual components in a way I don't enjoy as much.

And sometimes you just like smooth better than chunky. ;)