chipotle sauce

It was definitely time to try a new enchilada sauce.  This sauce goes with an enchilada recipe I'll be posting shortly.  I decided to throw out the chile powders for this one and use actual dried chiles.  Chipotles are a spicy, smoky dried chile that work in a lot of dishes.  This one worked well with the addition of a little cinnamon and some oregano. 

The veg route:
So we have some friends who are vegetarians and great cooks.  They shared this bouillon with us and it works pretty well.  When simmering the dried chiles on the stove, I put a small teaspoon full this base into 2 cups of water.  It helps flavor the chile water (which you'll use later on to thin out the sauce).  It's a little salty so get to know it before you use it in place of regular chicken broth.  If you want to go the veg route, I do suggest this.

Ingredients:
4-6 chipotles (the dry ones, number varies depending on how hot you want it)
1 guajillo chile
1 small onion, chopped coarsely
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 can tomato sauce
oregano, cinnamon, white wine, salt for taste. 

Stem and rinse chiles.  Remove any seeds that you can.  Put chiles in a pot with 2 cups of broth (vegetarian, regular...).  Throw in the onion and garlic.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.   When soft, pull out seeds and place in blender with tomato sauce with 1/2 cup of chile water.  Process until smooth adding chile water until desired consistency is reached. 
After this step, I put the sauce onto the stove in a sauce pot and add a dash of cinnamon, 1 t. finely ground oregano and 2 T. white wine.  Simmer for a few minutes tasting the sauce until it tastes right.  If you get it terribly hot, you could always add some more tomato sauce or if it's too mild you can add some dried chile powder. 

Enjoy!