Sauces
I am in love with sauces and specifically making sauces. I think that everything that you make should minimally have 2 sauces to use with your meal. I always find it exciting to be able to experiment with my food and mix in additional flavors. With tacos, pizza, french fries, burritos, meats… – sauces are very fun. All you need to make a sauce is a recipe or some creativity. It thrills me to take out the blender, think about what I’m cooking, and start throwing ingredients into the blender. For example, I decided to make enchiladas today, but I was tired of always making cheese, steak or chicken enchiladas. So I bought some country style pork ribs and thought I’d braise it to get the pork super soft and perfect for enchiladas. I didn’t fell like looking up a recipe to see what liquid I could braise it in, so I pulled out my blender and thought about what I was making. My enchiladas are made with corn tortillas, cheddar cheese, and a tomatillo cilantro sauce. I could braise it in a tomatillo cilantro sauce (tomatillos, cilantro, sauteed onions, roasted garlic, salt and pepper), but that would be too similar to the rest of the enchilada, I want the pork to stand out. So I added in 3 small tomatillos, 3 large tomatoes, 3 raw garlic cloves, a good amount of salt and pepper, smoked paprika, chili powder and chipotle powder. Blended it all up and fell in love. The sauce is a sour, salty and smokey mix – and it’ll be perfect for the pork. I think that I’ll puree the sauce when the pork is done cooking and place some of this sauce inside the enchiladas with the tomatillo, cilantro sauce over the top.