Let’s get saucy!

 
I like sauces; I like adding that wet element to a dish of roasted vegetables, without it always being tahini sauce (although I could easily eat tahini sauce every day of my life); I also like to have things prepared and ready to go in the fridge (I often come home for walking or working out very hungry and I need to be able to grab healthy homemade food quickly!); I like being able to control the oil (coconut oil is my choice), salt (limited) and sugar (none!) by making my own versions of everything; and I like having pots and pans bubbling away in my kitchen and mess everywhere whilst no one else is home, mess that magically disappears before they arrive at the end of their days! It’s magic you know!!  

A couple of days ago I decided to stock up: I made my versions of harissa and enchilada sauce, I made a tomato kasundi from the lovely blog that is Feast Wisely, and I made chipotle en adobe from Thomasina Miers ‘Mexican Food Made Simple’…this stuff is kick ass..possibly because I added a whole huge bag of dried chipotle chillies!!! 

Once again I followed the basics of Kellie’s rose harissa recipe, however, I used a mixture of guajillo (Top photo below) and Pasilla chillies, and in the absence of pepper in the fridge, I used only sun blushed tomatoes, and lots of them.

  
The tomato kasundi recipe is a superfood packed India spiced tomato chutney, with lots of ginger, garlic, turmeric, coconut oil, apple cider vinegar among the ingredients, however, I used 2 x 680g jars of tomato passata instead of fresh tomatoes so that mine was more of a sauce. I used some last night to create a mushroom dish..   

  For the enchilada sauce, I revisited the one I made last week with some amendments; I removed the flour and oil element that often forms the start of echilada sauce recipes and I merged several recipes I’ve read, which I really should have noted but I didn’t!!! From memory, I went down a route of using tomato paste, salt free vegetable stock, garlic, cumin, oregano, and some of the guajillo chillies that I’d softened for my harissa. Apologies for the lack of details!!! What I can tell you is that I kicked it up a notch with some of the chipotle en adobe sauce I made (jeez, that stuff is HOT! A little goes a long long way!), and I thickened it slightly with the guar gum that I was sent from My Protein recently.  

 I can now tell you that when using guar gum as a thickener, you need to sprinkle it over your dish, don’t just throw it in all in one go as it will clump and create a solid block in your sauce. Even with sprinkling it across your dish you still need to stir it in really well, I ended up whisking the sauce to disperse the guar gum successfully. 

And so I created my ‘skyline’ of jars of sauce!  

 

I hope this brings some colour into your day…I’m packing up some of my sauces to take along to this week’s Fiesta Friday blog party…late again, sorry! I hope this week’s wonderful co hosts, a Jess and Caroline,  will forgive me…;) 

The fabulous creator of Fiesta Friday, Angie has now also set up a Fiesta Friday on Pinterest, so you can find endless inspiration from all of the party goers there too now, check out this week’s party post for more details. Have a great day xx