This week's theme for I Heart Cooking Clubs is Stock Your Exotic Pantry - which was timely, because despite my best efforts our habanero chilli plant is still heavy with ripe lantern-shaped fruits.I perused Diana Henry's recipes for preserves made with chillis and settled on the West Indian Hot Pepper Sauce in Salt Sugar Smoke. Intended to be used like Tabasco, it has a green papaya and vinegar base and used six whole Scotch Bonnet chillis. Scotch Bonnets are not quite the same as habaneros, but they do have a similar heat and fruity flavour so it seemed reasonable to substitute them in this recipe.
As the stated yield was quite low - which is one of the advantages of this book, most of the recipes just make a delicious little pot or two, you don't end up with vast quantities - I decided to double the recipe in order to get more chillis out of my life.
I couldn't get green papaya, so I used some underripe mango instead.
Between the mango, turmeric and mustard powder, the cooked hot sauce was a lurid yellow colour, which blushed to a pretty orange as the red chillis were pureed into it. It actually ended up looking a lot like pumpkin soup and the thought of Russian Roulette soup cups did cross my mind.
My idea of doubling the recipe turned out to be a less-brilliant one, as the yield was considerably higher than stated. Instead of the two 500ml pots I was anticipating I ended up with two 500ml pots AND three 225ml pots. Which is a lot for a hot sauce that you add a drop at a time...
Fortunately Paul's colleagues laugh in the face of recommended serving suggestions, and polished off a whole jar in one lunchtime, smearing it lavishly into their sandwiches.
11 comments:
Haha gotta love coworkers with high spice tolerance! And I love the sound of this sauce. Sweet and spicy all at once!
I made a "hot" adobo, I think my husband would like your sauce!
Joanne - I know! One of them eats Naga chilli chutney which I think is insane! The sauce is surprisingly unsweet - hot and tangy!
Ostwestwind - It's a pity I can't send him some!
Yikes! My tummy would have a fit. It's really a shame, cause this looks fabulous.
(Posted your fritters this week)
I would have loved to have a taste of this hot sauce! Always fun to tickle the spice threshold.
what a wonderful excuse to break out the immersion blender! :)
Hot and tangy - the sauce does sound delicious but that would be several years' supply in my house!
'Russian roulette soup cups'--you are pure evil! ;-) I like the under-ripe mango switch out for the papaya.
Looks spicy good! I'm the only one who loves spicy food in my house, so it will last me quite a while too. Using mangoes sounds so delicious, must be fragrant too! A wonderful sauce to have in the pantry!
I'm loving Salt Sugar Smoke, and I've got this one bookmarked. I've never had any luck growing chillis but now you've got me thinking I need to have another try. We can almost never get green papaya here, so good tip on subbing the green mango, an not doubling the recipe!
my family is from the Caribbean and we actually make it with sweet ripened papaya or mango and not the green ones to cut the heat of the Scotch Bonnet a little but there is always a jar of this in my house and glad you enjoyed it
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