Adobo Sauce

Not to be confused with the portable document format, this sauce originally hails from Mexico and is sweet, spicy, sharp and smoky as well as packing a bit of heat.

For the Adobo Sauce:

• 50g dried chipotle chiles
• 50g dried guajillo/serrano chiles
• 1 cup white onion, diced
• 175ml pineapple juice
• 100ml orange juice
• 2 tbsp  cider vinegar
• 25g Dark Muscovado sugar
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed
• 1 tbsp cumin seeds
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 1 tbsp fresh chopped Thyme, but dried will do
• 1 tsp ground allspice
• 1 tsp good salt salt

Add in the cumin seeds to the hot pan until they start to jump about. Remove from heat and set aside.

Toast the chillies in a dry skillet until they just start to smoke, remove and place in a bowl and cover with 100ml water and leave for 1 hr.

Add the cumin seeds, water from the soaking chillies and remaining ingredients to a food processor and blend until smooth.

You have a choice now. Leave the chillies whole in the sauce. Get a bit more heat by blending half and leaving half whole. Or go all out and blend the lot, which is probably fine, you can always tone it down with a bit of soured cream, yoghurt, lime juice or tomatoes.

This goes great with just about any grilled meat and is a nice variation on the usual suspects.