I’ve finally found it.

I’ve been on a life-long quest to find restaurant-quality red and green chile sauces for tacos, enchiladas and all manner of Mexican food delights.

Like so many things in life, this recipe discovery came unexpectedly while I was chasing another recipe (for tamales).

As you know if you read Blue Cayenne, my friend Sarah and I have been partying with our own two-person tamaladas for several years. A class at our local Costa Mesa Sur La Table gave us the self-confidence to believe we could actually succeed as tamaleras. But, alas, while the tamale was a success the sauce was a challenge.

For this season’s tamalada, I picked up a little book titled Tamales 101 by Alice Guadalupe Tapp. (This book is available at your local bookstore or on Amazon here.) The book is full of interesting variations on tamales from traditional green chile and cheese ones to grilled jalapeno corundas made with a spicy jalapeno and tomato masa and no filling at all.

Tucked into the beginning of the little book there is a section on sauces and that is where I found these two wonderful sauces: Salsa Verde Sauce and Red Pork Chile Sauce (with no pork in the ingredients). They are thick and flavorful and perfect to sauce your next Mexican dishes.

Here is the recipe for the Salsa Verde as I prepared it in my kitchen. The recipe is easy. The magic in this sauce seems to be getting the right proportions of ingredients. I will post the red sauce recipe in another post. 

This would be a delightful soup to serve on New Year’s Eve. 

It’s delicious. 

It’s beautiful.

The Roquefort cheese and butter mixture stirred into the soup at the list minute adds a subtle and unexpected flavor that should wow your guests on that special night.

It would definitely be a conversation starter.

After all, who expects to find  blue cheese in their soup, let alone a fine sheep milk blue from Southern France with, according to Smithsonian Magazine, a pedigree that dates back to at least 1411–the year when French King Charles VI of France officially gave the cheese the protection of the crown.

Here’s a bit of history. Charles VI was known as Charles The Beloved when he was young. He succeed to the throne at eleven. As he matured, however, things took a dark turn and “The Beloved” morphed into “The Mad” as Charles’ mental health deteriorated.  At times, he thought he was made of glass and would shatter if jostled. At other times, he ran wildly up and down the halls of his palace, a development that caused his aides to seal the palace doors. In battle, he attacked his own men. It was a difficult time for France and its troubled king during a particularly fraught period in French history as France struggled with England.

We’re figuring that the recognition of Roquefort cheese as a French treasure was done on one of Charles’ good days.

I first learned this recipe at the La Bonne Cuisine Cooking School then located just off Main Street in Seal Beach, California. Margaret, the proprietor, was a talented recipe developer. I fell in love with the tiny cooking school and attended many classes there. We learned everything from classical French dishes to regional Mexican ones.

Sadly, La Bonne Cuisine Cooking School is long closed and to my knowledge no similar cooking school operates locally. Fortunately, I still have a big notebook of Margaret’s recipes. Here is the original recipe handout from the school with all the scribbles of an eager cooking student (me!). It looks like I took that class in the summer of 1979–23 years ago. 

Wow! I HAVE been serving this soup for a long time. 

Here is Veloute de Roquefort as I prepared it in my kitchen. This soup deserves the best Roquefort cheese you can find. 

There is a surprise in every delicious bite of this unusual salad!

The big surprise here is a big schmear of softened goat cheese and cream cheese hiding under this pretty pile of greens and golden beets. 

More good news! There can be a real WOW factor with this salad; it lends itself to being very artfully arranged on a plate. 

I served this recently at a dinner party. My guests were curious when I served it. When I collected the plates, every  bit of the salads was eaten down to the last tiny microgreen. 

I’m listing the ingredients below, but not the quantities. This recipe is very flexible. I’ll leave the quantities up to you, the size of your party and your taste.