Making a Different Kind of "Salsa"

I made another shopping trip to the Mexican supermarket in Cleveland, and one of my purchases was a bag of "chiles anchos"... ripened, dried "poblano" peppers.  They are dark and leathery in appearance.

Since I had never cooked with dried peppers before, I asked Alejandro for advice.  He said that first I needed to cut off the stems, open the peppers, and removed all the seeds.  Then the peppers should be soaked in hot water for about ten minutes.

 The peppers are then put in the blender along with a small can of chicken broth, some minced garlic, chopped onion and a bit of salt.  The resulting puree is a thick, deep red sauce.

I heated the "salsa" in a sauce pan.  For some reason it had a bitter taste, so I added a little sugar.  Also, the sauce was quite spicy which was surprising since "poblanos" are generally a mild pepper.  I'm glad that I did not add a "chipotle" pepper to add heat.

(By the way, that blender belonged to my mother, and must be over 50 years old.  It still works!)

I used my new "salsa" on enchiladas, and it tasted very authentic.

Here we think of "salsa" as being tomato-based (or "tomatillo"- based if it's a green sauce).  But in fact there are many Mexican sauces such as this one that have no tomatoes at all.