Serendipity Red and Green Chilli Sauce

Rasa Harvesting Red and Green Chilis

When we packed for our Christmas Journey to make our annual pilgrimage to Alison’s family in Toronto, NSW on Lake Macquarie this year we brought with us a laundry  basket full of things from the garden’s. Here is a picture of of picker and Cromwell treasure Rasa with the goods. I made it my mission to try and use everything in the basket over our Christmas week. When Christmas came yesterday I still had a couple dozen red and green chillis that had done a bit of hard time in the bar fridge come freezer. My search for a simple chilli recipe serendipitously sent me to this bit of guidance from New Mexico. Here is some information on the recipe and the base of knowledge used to start my journey.

New Mexico Red Chile Sauce Recipe

This version of New Mexico’s famous red chile sauce is from the ABQ Cuisine Expert, Gwyneth Doland. Mixed with shredded pork, it is used as a tamale filling, but all by itself it is also ladled over tamales as well as enchiladas, huevos rancheros, breakfast burritos, stuffed sopaipillas, chiles rellenos, and almost anything else you can think of. You may not need 4 cups of the sauce for your recipe, but you might as well make the whole batch; freeze extra portions in small re-sealable plastic containers for later use.

Using my do not go where the path may lead I have noted some modifications made to this recipe. I’d also like to say that this sauce, or the sauce somewhat like this sauce, that I made was a big hit with our Christmas Ham. Go figure. I tried it with our Rub Me Tender Roasted Chicken and thought it went well with that too.

My start was to chop up all the chillis (seeds and all) , along with some onions and garlic that I had already Crominated and put them into a cast iron pot with some chicken stock to float them nicely. Then I read the recipe and noticed the bit about roasting the chiles. More serendipity I had a couple of kg’s of our bacon ready to grill up so I cut off a few strips of fat (and our Large Black Pigs put down plenty of that) and heated up another cast iron pot with that fat. Then I scooped out as best I could the red and green chilis from the bath they were sharing in the chicken stock with onions and garlic. Voila. Back on track. Sort of. I let the two mixtures cook away side by side for about an hour. Then I pulled out the bits of bacon and rind from the second mixture and merged the two. They seemed quite happy together but I thought they might swim better with a cup of beef stock. After about another hour of simmering the mixture started to reduce down. It was then that I felt confident enough to have a taste. Still a bit hot in temperature to get a feel of what had been randomly mixed together so I got Alison to try. Al did not give me that look of oh honey….you really have not done it this time so I forged on. More reduction to the point that it was becoming a bit like a paste. Whole bits of chilli were showing in an oily heterogeneous mixture.

After it was cooled I poured it into a bowl and it sat on the serving table Serendipitously beside the other sauce I made to glaze the ham. And the rest is history.

Recipe courtesy of ABQ Cuisine Expert: Gwyneth Doland, www.visitalbuquerque.org/ABQExperts/cuisine

Everyone loves a bit of Serendipity on their plate