Preparation:
If you have dried chipotles, simply tear them and add them to the chiles when you pour the boiling water over them. If you are using canned chipotles such as chipotles en adobo (a tomato-based sauce that adds a faint sweetness; great for grilling!), just roughly chop the chipotles before adding them to the blender.
This is also a *great* marinade for strong-flavored fish; in fact, Kim called a few minutes ago to tell me she's making grilled shark coated with salsa roja. We've also made something like this with chipotles, adding olive oil, lime juice and cilantro to make it a kind of vinaigrette, and slathered it on salmon that we then broiled. That was terrific.
By the way, I use salsa roja as a dip for tortilla chips, as a condiment for eggs, as a taco sauce, and as the basis for my current favorite chile Colorado. That's a real simple recipe:
Make 1 or 2 recipes of salsa roja, above.
Marinate 1 to 2 pounds of beef (or if you can get it, buffalo meat) in the chile sauce, letting it stand overnight.
The next evening, pour the meat and the sauce into a large saucepan (unless you were clever enough to marinate them in the saucepan, in which case you don't have to wash an extra dish and you can just shove the whole thing onto the stove). Bring the meat and sauce to a boil, then reduce the temperature to a simmer. Cook covered for 20 minutes, then remove the cover and cook to reduce and thicken the sauce, about 30 minutes longer. Serve with fresh tortillas, frijoles negros and platanos fri |
