| CATEGORY | CUISINE | TAG | YIELD | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dutch | 1 | Servings | ||
INGREDIENTS
| 3 | Ripe yellow medium (baseball size) tomatoes | |
| 1 | md | Yellow onion (tennis ball!) |
| 3 | Nice big yellow bell peppers | |
| Several yellow chiles (orange is OK, too) for some taste and fire – I used about 5-6 Lemon Drops (yellow Ajis), guts included – Habaneros come to mind,too | ||
| 1/2 | A nice sized lemon ; Juice of | |
| 2 | Cloves garlic | |
| 1/2 | ts | Cinnamon |
| 1/2 | ts | Allspice |
| 1 | ts | Sugar |
| 1 | Fat pinch of nutmeg (I like the stuff) | |
| Salt to your taste | ||
| 2 | tb | Oil for sauteing and the sizzle finish |
INSTRUCTIONS
I think that before summer is completely gone and access to some of this stuff (garden/store) becomes tough, I'll post this sauce recipe that runs a close second in taste to a fresh batch of adobo. Actually, the idea of growing yellow bell peppers, yellow tomatoes, and yellow chiles came from this recipe, adapted from the mole amarillo in Mark Miller's _The Great Chile Book_. The idea is to use ingredients that are all as close to being yellow as possible, so that the end sauce turns out to be a golden yellow. I made this the first time with greenish tomatillos and Santa Fe Grandes that had a greenish tinge to them (overeager to pick, you know!) and the sauce wound up a gaggy color that I would not put my lips to and my wife wouldn't because it was too hot! (chilehead in progress!) So, once you corral the ingredients, it's not too complicated. Here it is: I use the broiler for most all of my roasting, so I'll refer to it as my method. Put the tomatoes and bell peppers under the broiler until the tomatoes are soft and the skin is split and brown in spots and the bells are blistered all over. You'll want to turn them a few times so that all this gets evenly done. Set them in a bowl and toss a towel over them and let them cool off a bit. Now put the _____ (your chile's name here) and the unpeeled garlic in to roast. The Ajis I use roast quickly - one turn over and they're done. I just snip the good stuff off the stem with a pair of scissors into the processor. The garlic takes a little longer. In fact, you could roast it earlier with the big stuff under the broiler or on a dry frying pan or toaster oven or whatever. While the bells and tomatoes are roasting, oil up a frying pan and peel, dice, and start sauteing the onion until it's just soft. Toss this sauteed onion into a food processor. A note on the pan: if you're not into doing dishes, use a bigger pan, like a Dutch oven, to saute the onions because the raw sauce also needs to be cooked after being pureed and a high-sided pan is handy for this. After cutting out the stem cores from the tomatoes and the stems and seeds from the bell peppers, roughly chop them and put them into the processor as well. I don't bother to skin them - the skins are thin and chop up nicely. Add the lemon juice, sugar, some salt, nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon. After the garlic cloves cool, peel and roughly chop and have them join the party in the processor. Puree all this stuff until you get the texture you like. Note: I could have done all this in one leaky batch, but decided to go with two shifts, instead. I like a texture where the skins are well chopped (I don't strain this sauce), but it also doesn't look like baby food. At this point, I empty the contents of the processor into another pan with a handle on it. The hot oil in the next step will make the sauce spatter and it's no fun being in the splatter zone with an awkward grip on a slippery bowl. After the blending, or during it, heat up a high-sided pan with the rest of the oil until the oil just starts to smoke. Pour in the raw sauce all at once while stirring. I like a whisk here because it mixes stuff well without pushing it around. The sauce will sizzle and spatter a bit, but keep the heat on it so that it doesn't stop bubbling. Constantly stirring, cook the bubbling sauce for about 10 minutes. It should be thick enough to almost coat a spoon. After it cools and loses more water, it should be nice and thick. Taste it and make any additions you might like (sorry, no subtractions!). This stuff is great with shrimp or fish or as part of some enchiladas or empanadas or chicken or ...... do enjoy! Posted to CHILE-HEADS DIGEST V4 #132 by sto_tolin@ONLINE.EMICH.EDU on Sep 22, 1997
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