Another guest post from Tom...
Elizabeth has mentioned that we have an abundance of hot peppers. She's made salsa, but that's only used a little bit. The preserving book she got had a recipe for making hot sauce, so this week as I take a break from work, I decided to work on that.
I started by picking about half a pound of serrano, jalapeño, and padrón peppers:
The recipe called for using the peppers raw, charred, or smoked. I chose charred, and broke out the cast iron grill to do the charring.
Here's what they looked like after the char:
Next, the peppers were stemmed and chopped and put in a jar of vinegar, salt, and garlic to sit overnight:
The next day, I cooked up the peppers for a few minutes with some of our honey, a touch of dried mango and pineapple, and a few spices, then blitzed the peppers in the blender until smooth and cooked the sauce again for a few minutes.
I wound up with three little jars of hot sauce:
All in all, a pretty straightforward project. The hot sauce is certainly hot (unlike Elizabeth, I used the seeds and ribs), but the sweetness adds a nice balance. The book kept talking about avoiding the fumes while the peppers cooked, but I didn't find it to be too hazardous.
Tonight, we feast on pasta pomodoro, with tomatoes, basil, and garlic from the garden.
I'll close with the video of a song that's going through our heads nowadays. It's a song by Greg Brown called Canned Goods, and there's some fun lyrics to it.
Elizabeth has mentioned that we have an abundance of hot peppers. She's made salsa, but that's only used a little bit. The preserving book she got had a recipe for making hot sauce, so this week as I take a break from work, I decided to work on that.
I started by picking about half a pound of serrano, jalapeño, and padrón peppers:
The recipe called for using the peppers raw, charred, or smoked. I chose charred, and broke out the cast iron grill to do the charring.
Here's what they looked like after the char:
Next, the peppers were stemmed and chopped and put in a jar of vinegar, salt, and garlic to sit overnight:
The next day, I cooked up the peppers for a few minutes with some of our honey, a touch of dried mango and pineapple, and a few spices, then blitzed the peppers in the blender until smooth and cooked the sauce again for a few minutes.
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| The cucumbers on the left will soon get pickled... |
All in all, a pretty straightforward project. The hot sauce is certainly hot (unlike Elizabeth, I used the seeds and ribs), but the sweetness adds a nice balance. The book kept talking about avoiding the fumes while the peppers cooked, but I didn't find it to be too hazardous.
Tonight, we feast on pasta pomodoro, with tomatoes, basil, and garlic from the garden.
I'll close with the video of a song that's going through our heads nowadays. It's a song by Greg Brown called Canned Goods, and there's some fun lyrics to it.