Dried Chile Cream Sauce

This is the simplest of all chile sauces, and it allows the flavor of the chiles to come through unaltered by other ingredients such as onions or garlic (or in the case of mole, chocolate). Not only is this sauce delicious, but because each chile surrenders its own identity to the sauce, it provides excellent training for cooks wanting to familiarize themselves with the nuances of individual dried chiles. This sauce requires little reduction because the chiles act as thickeners.