The chipotle sauce

There are a few things I always bring with me when I travel. Dark brown sugar. Black beans. And dried peppers, mostly a variety of chipotle and ancho chilies.

Sometimes you can find dried chipotles in the canned and packaged Tex Mex section of grocery stores in Beirut. But Lebanese grocery stores are notoriously unreliable. Oh, sometimes they’ll stock prized ingredient for a year or two, but inevitably it’ll vanish, sometimes for six months, sometimes forever – from the entire country.

This sauce, like most good things, came during a burning moment when I said to hell with it all! and used all of the chipotles I had left. It was glorious.

And while it was originally intended to be a wing sauce it turned out to be so much more.

I’d made a big pile of xian bing earlier that day and accidentally found it made for a very delicious, albeit very unorthodox, dipping sauce.

It’s also great with fried cauliflower or broccoli (fried anything, really) if you’re wary about stepping on other people’s food traditions.

This recipe will yield about eight ounces, enough to coat about eight wings and have some leftover for other things.

If you make this, don’t skimp on the butter! And use a nice one, preferably cultured (go with something French); it adds a huge amount of flavor and really ties the whole thing together.

The Chipotle Sauce

Ingredients:

5 dried chipotles soaked in hot water for 30 minutes (just covered with water)
Juice of one lemon
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 small cloves garlic
Heaping tbsp chopped onion
Tsp + tbsp tomato paste
⅓ cup sugar
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp oregano, optional
2 tsp golden tequila
Salt and pepper to taste
2-3 tbsp cultured butter chopped into ¼ inch cubes

Instructions:

1. Toast the cumin seeds and oregano if using in a pan until fragrant. Move to a bowl to stop the spices from burning.
2. Blend all ingredients except butter, adjusting sugar and salt to taste.
3. Strain the liquid into a pan, bring to a boil, and cook on low heat for about five minutes, stirring constantly with a spatula.
4. Add the butter, stirring as it melts so that it becomes completely integrated. Once melted, remove from heat.

Makes about 8 ounces or 225 grams