Movin' on Up

I'm a movin' on up
To the east side
To a deluxe apartment in the sky
Movin' on up
To the east side
I finally got a piece of the pie....

Yes, folks, I'm moving to the high rent district. I went out and plunked a couple of bucks on my very own dudecancook.com domain name. This here blog is now that there blog over on my new website. I promise I won't leave y'all behind and I'll always keep it real with my homies. It will be just like old times (sniff). Please start following me on the new site! Or better yet, sign up for my tweets: dudecancook@twitter.com.

dave

New World Veggie Saute with Crispy Tortilla Strips

This is a variant of a very simple dish I found in Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen, and it also reminds me of India, where in public places vendors cook fresh corn on a hot plate with charcoal and serve it in little cups with a spoon to passers by. Use the following ratios, each ear of corn makes enough for two-three people as a good sized side dish.

• 1 ear corn
• 1/4 cup diced onion
• 1/2 to 1 serrano pepper diced
• (optional) 1/2 cup diced chayote or zucchini
• 2 corn tortillas, cut into 1/4 inch strips and fried
• a bit of olive oil

I made this with zucchini because i have a surplus of that lying around, but I think chayote would be perfect for this dish. After chopping the vegetables and frying the tortilla strips, this takes about five minutes. For guidance on frying tortilla strips, refer to my tortilla soup recipe here.

Saute vegetables in olive oil until the corn turns a deep yellow and before the squash gets too soggy. Top with crispy tortilla strips after plating. That's it, hombres.

Tangy Roasted or Grilled Zucchini

This is a really simple dish. My favorite way to cook zucchini is to saute with chopped garlic in a little olive oil, and stop cooking while it's still bright green and firm. But I've been cooking zucchini two or three times a week lately, as my garden has produced an abundance of eggplant-sized zucchinis.

• Juice from two limes
• 1 tablespoon Ancho chile paste (optional)
• Freshly ground black pepper

The chile paste really is optional. I just my ancho chile paste like that guy in My Big Fat Greek Wedding uses Windex. It pretty much solves every culinary problem facing me.

Put the chile paste into the lime juice and stir. Slice zucchini on the diagonal - almost length-wise to maximize the size of the slices. Bathe in the lime juice and sprinkle with a couple turns of fresh ground black pepper. This is really good cooked over an open flame on the grill, or you can roast them at 400 for about 20 minutes. When roasting, I use a steam pan to get these guys cooked through.

Dover Sole Marsala

I know I just wrote about Dover sole, but my wife liked it so much Saturday that she ordered it again Monday. So I made it the way I most commonly do - with a balsamic/marsala sauce.

Follow the fish recipe as discussed on 28 June, but use Italian bread crumbs for the fish, and no other seasonings.

Marsala Sauce

• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 3/4 cup Marsala
• 1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
• 1-2 tablespoons flour
• 1 cup mushrooms, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic - chopped finely
• salt and black pepper to taste

Drain all but 3 tablespoons oil and keep on medium low heat. Add chopped garlic and saute until translucent. Add mushrooms and continue to saute. Once the mushrooms are looking good, sprinkle flour into the mix and stir with a fork until all of the oil is sopped up, and you have a thin paste going on. Add balsamic and marsala. Increase heat and bring liquid to a boil. Reduce to medium high and simmer until liquid reduces by 25% or so. Add broth and heat on medium, letting it bubble a bit until it thickens appropriately. This should not be as heavy as a cream gravy, but have some texture to it. Add about 1/2 teaspoon of salt and a few turns of freshly ground black pepper and serve.

Why I Love Whole Foods

I know, people joke about this place and call it "whole paycheck" yada yada yada. But sometimes it's worth a little extra for the great shopping experience. For example, on a recent Sunday morning, shopping for a big cookout, I picked up a sixpack of non-alcoholic beer. (I know i know, what's the point?) I knew there might be a problem because the computer system doesn't differentiate between NA and regular beer, and this was before noon, when it is illegal to buy alcohol on Sundays in Texas.

Sure enough, the computer didn't allow the cashier to ring up my beer. I rolled my eyes waiting for the usual, "I'm sorry, but the computer says..." while I know that I could go buy 10 bottles of 11% alcohol cooking wine and the computer wouldn't bark. But the cashier conferred with a collegue, then a manager, and they ran back and got the price for me. "Just ring it up as cheese," said the manager. Now that's using your head and serving the customer. Hell, they may have broken a law or two, but they did right by me. Now if they'd just do something about the $12.99 flank steaks.

Thanks, Whole Foods!

Dover Sole with Ancho Chile Cream Sauce

Dover Sole is about my favorite fish.  When fresh (or even freshly frozen), it is the sweetest tasting non-fishy fish in the world.  Or at least in my little section of it.  So if you read this recipe and think the sauce sounds too complicated, don't make the sauce.  I normally bread and fry dover sole in a little olive oil and butter and serve with no sauce.  It is that good.

But I did a variant yesterday, and made a creamy ancho chile sauce with serrano peppers and mushrooms.  The sauce ended up tasting kind of like a Pontchartrain sauce - kind of a spicy cajun deal, and it was yummy. I could just see making this with some lump crabmeat or crawfish tails.  The red serrano peppers from my garden really helped with the visual appeal, in addition to jazzing up the spice content.

Fish fixins:

• 2 eggs
• 1 lb Dover sold (fresh - or frozen fresh)
• 1 tablespoon ancho chile paste (see this blog 28 Mar 09 for recipe)  
• plain breadcrumbs
  
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 stick butter

Heat olive oil and butter on medium heat.  It needs to be hot enough to where a drop of water flicked in there from your finger sizzles nicely. Beat eggs in a bowl, and add cumin and chile paste, and mix it all up nicely. Pour a bunch of bread crumbs onto a plate.  Dip the fish into the egg mixture, then dredge it through the bread crumbs. Place into the hot oil.  The level of oil and butter should be high enough to where the fish is almost submerged.  You'll need to be careful handling the fish in the fryer because it will break up on you. You cannot just flip it with tongs, or you'll end up with a mess on your hands. After 2-3 minutes (assuming there's a lot of sizzling and bubbling going on), flip the fish.  I prefer to use a long spatula to minimize chances of breakage. The fish should be browned nicely. If you cook it on too low a heat, it can be a little soggy and greasy.

I can fit about a half a pound of filets in my iron skillet, so what I do to keep everything warm while i finish the job and make the sauce is put a cooling rack on a cookie sheet into a 200 degree oven and keep the fish warm there. I use the cooling rack to allow any excess oil to drain.

Run the fish through the oil until you're finished - you should be able to do a pound in two batches. While the fish are frying, slice up mushrooms and serrano pepper, if you're making the sauce.

Drain all but a tablespoon and a half of the oil.  

The sauce

• 1 tablespoon flour
  
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms (optional)
  
• 1 serrano pepper (red, if available) - or a red or yellow habanero
  
• 1 cup chicken broth
  
• 1 cup whipping cream or 1/2 cup Mexican sour cream
  
• 1 tablespoon ancho chile paste  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• fresh ground black pepper

Saute the mushrooms in the oil for two or three minutes, until they look like you'd want to eat them. Add the serranos and give a stir. After about a minute, sprinkle flour into the mixture, stirring everything nicely so that it's not too much of a paste, but the oil is about all soaked up. This will be anywhere from 1 to 2 tablespoons of flour, depending on how you eyeballed the remaining oil/butter mixture. Once you have a nice smooth liquidy paste, pour in the chicken broth and raise heat to high.  Stir in ancho chile paste and shake salt and cumin into the mixture.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat.  Let it simmer for a couple of minutes until it starts to reduce, then add crema Mexicana or whipping cream.   Give the pepper a few turns.  Taste the sauce - if it's not hot enough (it depends if your ancho chile paste is pure ancho or if it's the chipotle ancho blend i like to make), you can sprinkle some cayenne pepper into the mixture. Cook on medium-low heat until the sauce reaches your desired consistency. If too thin, just cook longer, too thick, add a little more broth.  

I serve this with rice, as pictured, with roasted zucchini (to be blogged later). This will feed two hungry folks or three salad-eaters.

Chicken Fajitas - in India

I was on a business trip to India for the month of May, and stayed at a hotel with a kitchen. That gave me the opportunity to cook dinner in my room in between late night conference calls back to the US when I didn’t have time to go to the restaurant.And how many times can you have the paneer butter masala with garlic naan, anyway?  (this place had a good one). Actually, I can answer that question. Three times.

On the weekend, I was determined to make some Tex-Mex for my colleague and me, just to get a break from the standard fare of curries and kebabs. So I ventured out and found a grocery store full of imported goods.  Things like Maxwell House coffee (oh my!), De Cecco pasta, and other good western foods. No tortillas though (and frankly, I won’t even buy tortillas in New York or Arkansas, let alone India).  So I had to find some ingredients for my own fajita fest.  I bought flour, olive oil, salt, cumin (fortunately, I knew the Hindi word for that - jeera), and red pepper.  I had to search for a rolling pin, as my kitchen was not outfitted with one.  Later, I went to the local supermarket (basically, a little one room store, smaller than Imelda Marcos’ shoe closet) and asked, “Aap ke pas rolling pin hai?” (do you have a rolling pin?) while making the universal rolling pin motion.  “Chapati karna ke liye”  (to make chapatis, an indian flatbread).  Ahh, their eyes would light up and they’d be on the floor digging around behind toys, kitchen goods, you name it in search of that elusive rolling pin.  In two places, they came up with the base - something that looked like a tambourine - it seems making a chapati requires a rolling pin and a counterpart underneath.  “Uper, uper” I’d say, again making that rolling motion.  After a couple of stores, I walked back to my hotel, the proud owner of a proper Indian chapati rolling pin.   I was able to find baking powder at the first place I went.  It had a nice layer of dust on top of the lid, so I imagine this was aged baking powder, but why be picky?  I went to the local subzi walla (vegetable vendor) and picked up some of the wonderful red onions they have in Maharashtra along with some chili peppers, limes, and garlic.  These red onions are so sweet, they are served in many restaurants as side dishes - peeled and whole, smaller than a golf ball, you just pick them up and eat them like fruit.  Man, those are good.  And the limes you get in India are smaller even than the Key limes we buy in the US, with very thin skin.  You have to only slice them in half to provide a perfect fit between the thumb and index finger and complement any spicy kebob. 

But I digress.

To make the tortillas, I found a recipe on You Tube.  I don’t remember the specifics - many recipes call for shortening or lard, but I went with olive oil for health reasons (and that’s what i had).  Tortillas call for only flour, salt, water, baking powder, and oil (or shortening).  The key is to use warm water - it makes the dough more pliable.  The recipe I found had me making the dough, letting it rest for 5 minutes, then rolling golf sized balls, and let them rest for some time before rolling out the tortillas and frying them in a skillet.  They turned out pretty good, although I think you need higher heat than what I had and cook them very quickly (grrr - trying to cook on an unfamiliar electric range is no fun).  If you cook too long on lower heat, they’ll be a bit stiff.

To make chicken fajitas, marinade chicken breasts in olive oil, chopped garlic, cumin, red pepper, and lime juice for at least an hour.  Back home, I’d use cilantro too, which they have in India - I just couldn’t find any on this particular day.  These are best when grilled, but you work with what you have.  I sauteed some onions and peppers in olive oil after sauteeing the chicken, chopped it up and rolled it into my freshly made tortillas.  One thing I didn’t find was cheddar or jack cheese.  Even though I used most of the ingredients I use back home, these had a distinctly Indian flavor to them.  I don’t know if it was the flour, the red pepper, cumin, or onions, but it just wasn’t the same as the Tex-Mex I know.  Regardless, it was a nice variant on a long trip.  Of course, my colleague and I found a baseball game to watch while we ate, so we felt like we were back in Houston, having a little cookout.

Recipe: Back to Basics - Macaroni and Cheese

Quick show of hands - who grew up on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?  Who still feeds that to your kids?  OK, that's everybody. Now who has ever made macaroni and cheese without opening the "cheese packet"?  I thought so.

I had a wild hare last week and bought some elbow macaroni. I've had a hankering for some mac n cheese lately, but just couldn't bring myself to buying a box o' product. I'm also trying this Barilla pasta product - it tastes a lot better than whole wheat pasta and is better for you. It's made from a variety of whole grains and legumes and has protein and omega-3s so it's all good.  So why not add a whole bunch of dairy fat to make it even better? Beats me.

You'll find that this may take about 5 minutes of work instead of 30 seconds like the Kraft stuff, but what were you going to do with that extra 4 minutes and 30 seconds, anyway? Elapsed time, this will take you 45 minutes, but that's no big deal. You pop it in the oven and then you have 30 minutes to make the rest of your dinner while this bad boy heats up.

• 8 oz elbow macaroni
• 1 3/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup flour
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 8 oz grated cheese
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 to 1 serrano pepper (or 1/4 jalapeno or red pepper flakes)

The Betty Crocker recipe calls for American cheese or Velveeta, but I stay away from that stuff. But you do want at least one decent melting cheese like a mozzarella or quesadilla. I used a blend of jack, white cheddar, swiss,) and mozzarella. I topped it with parmesan.

Cook macaroni and set aside. While that's going, go ahead and preheat your oven to 375. Warm the butter and saute onions until they're translucent. Add flour slowly and stir with the butter until you have a paste - you may not need all the flour. Add milk and bring to a boil - then remove from heat. 

Put the macaroni an an uncovered baking dish, and toss with grated cheese. Pour in the milk mixture, add the peppers, about a teaspoon of salt, and a few turns of freshly grated black pepper. Stir the mixture to distribute contents evenly and bake uncovered at 375 for about 30 minutes. 

Damn. That's some good stuff. I don't think I'll go back to the "side dish in a box" after this.

Recipe: Ancho Chile Paste

Forwarning - this isn't a meal unto itself, so don't make a batch of this and call out, "honey, dinner's ready!" You'll be facing a big letdown. Note: this recipe calls for a food processor.

• 6-8 dried ancho chiles 
• 6-8 cloves of garlic - roasted
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• up to 1/4 cup vegetable or chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon comino (optional)

This is a variant of the recipe found in Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen cookbook.

Ancho chiles are very mild and pungent, and when soaked, smell more like raisins than hot peppers you may be accustomed to. I add this paste to just about anything southwestern that I'm making, whether it's a fajita marinade or a mess of beans. I've even attempted to make a pasta sauce with this a few times, but I have to say that one is still in the developmental stages. If you do use this in a recipe where you want a spice kick, you'll need to get the spice kick elsewhere, as the paste is more for enriching your dish with an earthy complex flavor that you won't find by just chopping up some jalapenos.

Cut open and deseed the chiles, and open them up enough so that they can be pressed flat. The last time I bought anchos, I saw some chipotle chiles at the same store, so I added some of these to the mix - they really livened up matters from a spice perspective. Briefly broil or sear the chiles. If you broil them, make sure you do not over cook, as they will burn quickly and not taste so good. I prefer to sear them in an iron skillet - just get the skillet good and hot, and press the chile down briefly on each side for less than a minute until you hear a crackle and see a wisp of smoke (or is it the other way around?).  Once the chiles have been properly singed, soak them in water for about 30 minutes. While this is going on, roast the garlic. You can bake on 350 for about 25 minutes, or broil (but ten cuidado! you don't want to burn it).  Squeeze the roasted garlic from its peel and gather the soggy anchos and place in a food processor. Add the olive oil and a little broth and process. You may not need much of the vegetable/chicken broth - it's just there to keep the chiles honest and smoothen the paste as it spins around in the food processor. 

This will make about a cup and a half. I store it in the refrigerator in a jar, and it keeps for some time. I can't say how long, as I usually consume it within a month or two.

BTW - I don't think I've ever listed comino as optional in a recipe before, but i typically don't add it to my chile paste, as any recipe that calls for the paste calls for the comino, anyway, so why worry about it here? The same goes for other spices - if you wanted this to stand alone, you'd want some salt, freshly ground black pepper, etc. But here, we're just making a paste to add into whatever recipe calls for it and worry about the complementary ingredients at that time.

Recipe: Tequila Lime Salmon with Pico de Gallo

I love how a good fresh salsa of any sort complements the flavor of smoked or grilled salmon. I had grilled salmon with a tomatillo salsa in a restaurant last week, and thought, "I can do that!" I did something a bit different, but it was good! (as my Italian friend says, gnam gnam!)

• 4 salmon filets (about 2 lbs / up to 1 kg)
• 1/2 cup (any grade) + one shot (good) tequila
• two beers
• 1/3 cup ancho chile paste - or 1 tablespoon chili powder or both
• 1 tablespoon comino
• 1 lime wedge plus juice from 1 lime
• pico de gallo
• 2 avocados
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 tablespoon sea salt (optional)

This recipe will take at least two hours counting marinade time, so you need to get started quickly. One hour in the marinade is sufficient, but I prefer two or three hours if you have the time. I listed the salt as optional, as some folks are watching their blood pressure.  Salt adds a bit of flavor, but I don't find it necessary. And it doesn't matter how much salt I cook with, my wife will salt the crap out of whatever I serve her, anyway. I will have another blog entry on the ancho chili paste - this is a staple in my house, and I always have some in the fridge, so I use it with just about any southwestern-style recipe.

Drink the shot of tequila, then squeeze the lime wedge into your mouth. Now you're ready to get started.

For the marinade, combine the rest of the tequila, juice from the lime, comino, cilantro, salt, and chili paste / powder in a shallow dish. Place the filets in here, skin side up. Make sure the liquid is at least half-way up the sides of the fish, so you get a good soaking going on. I'll usually  just add a little tequila to get the marinade to the optimal level. You could also have another tequila shot at this time, depending on the effect you're looking for.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 to 3 hours.

To cook the fish, I prefer smoking. I wax eloquently about the benefits of smoking fish in my blog entry from December 2007. Smoke these filets about 45 minutes to an hour based on how hot your smoker gets. Or if you're not that ambitious, you can grill, bake, or broil these bad boys.  For broiling, see my sea bass recipe from last month (the sear, flip, and broil method), or just bake on 400 for about 25 minutes.  

While the fish is smoking, drink the two beers, and make the pico de gallo and prep the avocado. If you're not from Texas, pico de gallo is just a nice fresh topping made with tomatoes, onion, cilantro, and serrano or jalapeno peppers and a squeeze of lime juice. Google it if you can't figure it out from that. Some folks like to mix it up with a little mango or grapefruit, which I've done once or twice, myself. I'll partake of that mixture in a restaurant, but at home I tend to stick to tradition and leave the fusion to the fusionistas in the restaurant trade.

One last thing - I love to drizzle a really high grade olive oil over sliced avocado and add a few twists of fresh ground pepper. I've also got pictured a slice of my rustic sourdough rye - I can't have a meal without bread or rice or pasta of some sort. Bread in this case is perfect for mopping up any garlic, salmon bits and pico de gallo, so you can just put the plate right back in the cupboard without washing.

Y'all enjoy now, you hear?

Recipe: Seared Sea Bass Steaks with Lemon Butter Sauce

Sea bass is so good that all you really have to do is make sure it's heated all the way through and then get out of the way and eat it. You could probably just toss a couple of sea bass steaks in the microwave and they would be delicious.

Now, I wouldn't try that, myself, but I'm just trying to make a point here. With some foods, it's not the cook, it's the ingredients.

This dish can be whipped up in about 10 minutes + whatever time it takes to make your side dishes. I conveniently had a nice couscous salad with feta, olives, and tomatoes in the fridge, so I didn't have to do much else here.

Preparation: pull that sea bass out of the fridge and let it warm up to room temperature prior to cooking - 30 minutes should do the trick. I like to start up the lemon butter in advance, so I'm not distracted from the delicate art of cooking the fish. The thing about fish is you just don't want to overcook it. One or two minutes can mean the difference between creating a moist juicy meal that you would recall for the next week with loving affection versus ending up with a heated old tennis shoe with a distinct fishy taste.

Note: this dish calls for 1 iron skillet.

Lemon butter can be done in a variety of ways. Sometimes you put the butter in first and sometimes the lemon. I'll use about a 1 stick of butter to 1 lemon ratio, and whisk in about a tablespoon of flour per stick. Sometimes, I'll thin this out with white wine if I want a more delicate sauce - about 1/2 cup per stick of butter. If you're going to add wine, double the flour ratio and whisk that into the butter prior to adding the wine, to avoid lumps. In general, I like to start with the amount of butter I'm planning to use (maybe a quarter stick per person), then add the lemon to taste. If you start with too much lemon, you'll end up adding more and more butter to get the taste right resulting in far more sauce than you need, and this goes a long way. You need only a tablespoon of sauce drizzled over the fish to give it just that little je ne sais quoi. You can let the sauce mellow in a small saucepan at warm temperature while you get the fish going.

Get that iron skillet of yours smoking hot on the stovetop - about a medium high setting. Oil it very lightly with olive oil, as too much oil will cause a lot of spitting and spattering at a later stage of the recipe. Ideally, the skillet is large enough to accommodate all of your steaks without crowding.

Prepare the steaks by grinding black pepper over both sides. (remember - they should be at room temperature by now - we are going to be cooking these at high heat but briefly, so we want to make sure they're cooked all the way through)

Prepare a measuring cup with 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup of any type of cooking wine. Warm this in the microwave - you don't need to bring it to a boil - you just don't want it to be ice cold, either. Turn your oven broiler on high, and position a rack in the top half of the oven that will fit your skillet.

Sear the steaks in the skillet for 1-2 minutes and flip. Last night, I seared them for 1 minute per side, and I felt like they could have gone a bit longer - I really enjoy the crispy texture of the seared edges and I think another 30 seconds per side would have been ideal.

After 1-2 minutes on the other side, remove from heat, and pour the wine/water mixture slowly into the skillet (not directly on top of the fish) until there is enough to cover the bottom of the pan. You don't need to use the full cup of liquid. Be careful, as this can spit and spatter as the liquid comes to a boil.

Park that skillet in the oven with the broiler on high. Broil for five minutes, remove from heat, and serve. As pictured, I served with sliced avocado and a drizzling of lemon butter wine sauce.

Bon appétit!

Smoked Red Pepper and Tomato Cream Soup

1. 
   
   
   
   
   This recipe is great - my buddy Mike sent it to me, and I finally concocted it this afternoon. I halved this recipe and it was plenty of soup for four people.
   

• 8 large red bell peppers cut in half and seeded
• 2 lbs tomatoes, cored
• 1large onion quartered
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter or olive oil
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 6 cups chicken or vegetable stock
• 5 sundried tomatoes, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes & halved
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 ancho chile pepper, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes & chopped
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 to 2 tablespoons cornstarch mixed with enough water to make a paste
• 1 cup corn kernels, lightly roasted
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 to 1 tsp cayenne or your favorite spice

Smoke peppers, tomatoes, corn, onion and garlic for 30 minutes. If you don't have a smoker you can put the peppers and tomatoes under the broiler & char the skin. Then put in ice water for a few minutes and remove charred skin then chop.

If you have the smoker, make sure you peel the tomatoes and peppers before chopping.

Chop onions and garlic and saute for a few minutes in a large soup pot. Stir in red peppers, tomatoes, tomato paste, sundried tomatoes, ancho pepper and chicken/vegetable stock. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. While this is going on, slice corn kernels from the cob (one cob makes about 1/2 cup of corn).

Add heavy cream, cilantro salt and pepper, and cornstarch (or flour) and simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes and run through blender in small batches to puree (don't fill blender more than halfway; use a towel over blender; hot soup!) I'm serious about covering the blender - I didn't use a towel on the first batch and it spewed all over the wall!

Serve with with bit of sour cream and some chopped cilantro and corn on top. I like Mexican cornbread with this dish (or with any tortilla soup or pinto beans recipe). I think a nice ripe avocado would also go nicely with this (that was my intention today, but I forgot).

This makes 4 quarts.

One note about the ancho chiles - I find rehydrating ancho chiles a drag sometimes and they are so good, so what I do is make a big batch of ancho chile paste and keep it. I get about 8 ancho chiles, and char them briefly in an iron skillet before soaking. I roast 6 cloves of garlic, add some cumin and maybe 1/4 cup of chicken or vegetable broth to this in a mixer to make a nice smooth paste. The ancho chiles are not hot - they smell and taste more like raisins than chipotle japapenos, but they add a nice flavor to any mexican dish. I store a jar of this in the refrigerator so I can grab a couple of tablespoons on demand.