Red Pepper Chipotle Adobo

Still managing to hang on to a little of the home-made chipotle salsa from our mad half day Mexican course. Tommy Miers wonderful book and TV programme has only increased the growing interest in this simple peasant cuisine and I wanted to make sure that our recipes were as authentic as possible (without being too much of a pain to shop for). This sauce or relish is I think even better than our favourite Chipotle en Adobe from The Cool Chile Company and goes with anything from plain old avocado on toast to vegetables roasted in one of the exotic recardos from the Yucatan. You can buy fabulous dried chillies from a wide variety of online sources now - I got ours from MexGrocer. Don't worry, they look incredibly shrivelled when they arrive, but the flavour is wonderful!

Ingredients

2 dried chipotle chillies

3 dried ancho chillies

1 tbsp olive oil

½ onion, chopped

1 small red pepper, chopped

4 cloves garlic, sliced

3 tbsp tomato puree

½ tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp light muscovado sugar

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

200-250ml light vegetable stock

 Makes a good bowlful

First of all toast the dried chillies briefly in a small frying pan. Transfer to a large bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave for at least an hour (better and more reassuringly soft if you leave for 2 hours). Drain, de-seed and puree the flesh in a small blender, adding extra water in needed. (If you want the sauce really hot keep in some of the seeds too).

Then, sauté the onion and pepper in a medium sized pan until soft. Add the garlic and cook for another minute before adding the spices. Cook again for a minute and add the sugar and puree. After another minute or two add the vinegar, stock and pureed chillies. Simmer for 5 or 10 minutes to thicken and then blend. I left our salsa quite chunky but feel free to make it more like a smooth ketchup.

So easy, so addictive.