Category: Peppers Roasted

I can’t believe I haven’t posted a roasted chili sauce before. This is a super delicious and easy sauce you can make with any of the roasted chilies you get in your CSA share. Ue your hot, mild or even sweet if you use roasted Carmen.

You can eat the sauce with just chips or put it inside a burrito or make enchiladas or huevos rancheros or just eat a bowl of it. It makes everything better, just beans and rice and chile sauce is so good. 

You can make this vegetarian/vegan by using vegetable broth. To make this you’ll need;

• 1 pound of roasted chilies, any kind. Peel and seed them. 
• 1/2 cup of broth, again any kind you like, or even just water.
• 1/2 cup each chopped tomatoes and onions
• a few cloves of garlic and some spices like cumin and oregano about 1 teaspoon if the spices. 
• Hot sauce is optional, I didn’t use it this time. My chilies were plenty hot enough. 
• 1 Tablespoon each oil and flour (I forgot to put those in the picture) any flour will do, gluten free, whole wheat or masa flour. I used plain all purpose flour. 

Heat a pan with the oil and add the onions and cook until the onions are soft. Add the garlic and flour and stir until the flour is absorbed. 

Add the spices you are using and slowly add the broth and everything else.

Let that simmer until the tomatoes have totally collapsed and the sauce is thickened to your liking, about a half an hour. 

You can change the mood of this chili by using a different thickener than flour. If you use masa flour or even crushed corn chips instead of flour and you get a deep rich flavor that is more New Mexican cuisine tasting. 

Only 3 more weeks of CSA left. Start freezing some chilies so you can make this for winter.

Have a great week. See you at pickup.

Mo

This is nothing new, or earth-shattering. Just a tried and true dish I thought I would post as a reminder for ‘what to do with roasted chilies’.

We had last minute guest over for dinner last night and I had to stretch the food we had. I looked in the refrigerator and saw a bag of roasted chilies. I always have eggs and milk and some sort of cheese. I threw together this Chili Relleno Casserole in no time.

I didn’t use the flour called for in the recipe to make it GF, and I used a whole lot less cheese and I used 5 eggs, not the 4 called for. I am pretty sure you can’t screw up this dish and you can sub or exclude ingredients at will.

Eggy, cheesey, roasted chili goodness.

I served it with some tomato sauce I had leftover from canning, so good….like I planned it…

Have a great week.

Mo

I love cornbread. I like to add seasonal vegetables into cornbread batter and serve it with plain pinto beans for an easy dinner.

The roasted chili’s I got this week were really flavorful and pretty mild so I wanted to make some cornbread with roasted chilies.
As with almost all my recipes, use this as a guide. You can sub the roasted chilies for corn, or scallions, or bell peppers, or peaches or raspberries. You can leave out, or change the type of cheese you use too.
I used course ground cornmeal and whole wheat flour, but use whatever flours and cornmeal you like. You can even use gluten free flour here and it will turn out great.

Recipe

ingredients
3 roasted chilies (about 3 ounces total)
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (packed) grated cheese (about 4 ounces)
1 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted, cooled

Preheat oven to 400°F. Butter (‘Pam” spray) 8X8 baking pan.
Mix wet ingredients in one bowl, dry ingredients in another, grate cheese, and chop chilies.

Mix all the measured ingredients into a bowl add wet ingredients into dry and stir just until blended. Mix in chilies and cheese. Transfer batter to prepared pan.

Bake bread until deep golden brown on top and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

This week one of your choices will be roasted chilies. We roast the chilies at the Farm right before driving to the CSA pick-up and bag the chilies at the pick-up. The chilies will still be hot and will look like this when you get them.

The chilies are fairly mild, I would say not even medium hot. But very flavorful. To prepare them you just need to remove the charred skin, stem, and seed them. Like so.

One of my favorite things to do with roasted chilies is to make rajas. Rajas are basically roasted chilies sliced thin with onions and cream.

Rajas can be used as a taco filling, or as an appetizer served with tortilla chips, or as a side dish with fish or meat.

We have a strong Hispanic community working here at Red Wagon and I have asked several of our Hispanic workers how they make rajas.

This is my ‘gringa’ interpretation, with apologies to Marta and Chayo for any in-authenticity and my poor understanding of Spanish.

Rajas con crema recipe

1 pound roasted chilies

1 medium white onion

vegetable, or olive oil

a little garlic, and cumin if you like

1/4 cup crème fraîche, cream cheese, or heavy cream

Cut clean and seeded chilies into 1/3-inch-thick strips. Halve onion lengthwise and cut each half lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick slices.

In a heavy skillet cook onion in oil over moderately low heat, stirring frequently, until softened, about 5 minutes.

Add chilies and salt garlic and cumin to taste and cook, stirring, 5 minutes.

Add créme fraîche cream cheese, or cream and cook, stirring, 2 minutes.

Rajas may be made 1 day ahead and chilled, covered. Reheat rajas before serving.

These are a very sweet pepper called Carmen. Roasting them brings out even more sweetness and complex flavors. To prepare these you simply need to rinse off most of the charred peel and seed and de-vein them.

You can put some olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar on these peppers and essentially you will have what you get a Whole Foods olive bar or buy in jars that you would pay big bucks for.

I like to use these on grilled cheese sandwiches. But I really love roasted red pepper sauce.

Roasted red pepper sauce is almost as easy as making pesto. Seed and de-vein your peppers as above and take the peppers for a spin in your Cuisinart or blender.

Add some onions and garlic sauteed in olive oil.

And take that for a spin. If you are going to eat it right away you can add a splash of cream or 1/2 & 1/2 and some Parmesan cheese. Use this like you would pesto, on pasta or bread as a spread or to compliment some grilled vegetables or meat.

I wanted to save mine for winter eats so I am going to freeze it at this point and add cream when I use it.

Yeah. I love putting some things away for winter.