Salsa Macha

It is cold outside, Friday night is only hours away, and we need to kick it off with something a bit filling, satisfying and indulgent.

I can’t think of a recipe with such a fatty list of ingredients, (although I’ve seen a lot worse on the ingredients list of dips picked off the supermarket shelves), and worse still it is easy to polish off an awful lot of this stuff in a very short space of time. But hey-ho, this is an extremely versatile cooking sauce, dip or marinade; akin to satay sauce, but with a spicy and smoky taste. Traditionally it is heavy on chipotles, but I find that using a large proportion of the widely available chipotle morita is too overpoweringly smoky and gives it a burnt flavour. So I usually use less of them, or milder home-smoked chillies, as well as guajillo powder.

150g crunchy peanut butter

3 chipotle moritas (probably more if you have smoked the chillies yourself and they are less intense)

4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped.

100ml olive oil

2 tbsp brown sugar

2 tbsp sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar

2 tsp guajillo chilli powder

1 tsp sesame oil

This is almost a cheat’s recipe, as it uses peanut butter to dispense with the need to blend nuts into the sauce, but this doesn’t seem to affect the flavour and it makes the recipe so simple I am more likely to use it.

Soak the chipotles in a small amount of hot water for about 20 minutes, then take them from the water and chop them finely. Or you can grind them into a powder if you have a spice or coffee grinder.

In a small saucepan mix all the ingredients together and bring to the boil, simmer it for a minute or two whilst stirring constantly. Transfer to a bowl and leave to cool, as it cools the sauce will thicken.

This is a rich and tasty dip when served with corn chips or pitta breads. It is also a great thing to pour over barbecued meat, as you would chicken satay, but to my mind the extra smoked chilli gives it the edge.