Guajillo Chile
4 recipes found
Roasted Carrots With Mole Encacahuatado
If your love of peanut sauce knows no bounds, it’ll surely extend to this recipe, adapted from my cookbook “Linger: Salads, Sweets and Stories to Savor” (Knopf, 2025). It’s inspired by a Mexican peanut mole that is traditionally served with chicken in the dish pollo encacahuatado. The term mole stems from the Nahuatl word “molli,” which means sauce or concoction. Mole — not just one dish but a whole category — is used in different ways: as a dressing or sauce for meats or roasted vegetables, or smothering enchiladas or rice. Here, this dark, intense peanut sauce is served with cumin-scented roasted carrots. Bunches of small carrots are ideal, as the carrot greens make an herby addition to the dish, but you can simply substitute fresh carrot tops with parsley, if your carrots are lacking.
Salsa Macha Roast Salmon
Salsa macha is typically served as a topping for anything from sunny-side up eggs to quesadillas and mariscos. But when you use it as a quick seasoning for slow-roasted fish, it delivers brightness and full-on flavor without giving the fish a chance to overcook. Here, this minimalist salsa macha calls for easy-to-find guajillo chiles, sesame seeds and slivered almonds, which bring a nutty sweetness — feel free to double the recipe if you’d like extra to keep in the fridge. Serve directly from the baking dish, and spoon the salsa over the fish as you serve it with crusty bread on the side for dipping.
Sea Bass With Garlic Chips and Salsa Macha
When I visited Veracruz, Mexico, a number of years ago, there was a wonderful seaside restaurant where the specialty was a whole fried fish topped liberally with lightly fried garlic chips, called huachinango (red snapper) al mojo de ajo. (“Al mojo de ajo” can also refer to more complex garlic sauces.) Here, a version of that preparation is employed for fish fillets. First, garlic slices are gently fried in oil until golden, and then the fish is fried in the same oil. The fish is then drizzled with salsa macha, which isn’t traditional but nicely complementary, and tucked into warm tortillas, making for wonderful tacos.
Chamoy
Chamoy, a vibrant and tangy family of sauces and condiments from Mexico, is traditionally made with fruit and mild dried chiles (and sometimes mango, tamarind or hibiscus flowers as well). To make your own at home, grab those stone fruits on your counter and simmer them with dried chiles until softened, then blend with sugar, tamarind, vinegar and orange juice into something electric and tangy. Taste along the way to dial in the sweetness and tartness, so it’s exactly as jammy or restrained as you want. Just like tajín, chamoy makes a delicious accent for watermelon, jicama and cucumber spears. It’s also delicious drizzled over fruit salad, layered into mangonadas or used on the rim of micheladas. Think of chamoy as the syrup on a sundae, but much more thrilling in flavor.