Probably Due To Network Congestion

First off, here’s a small crop of pods. The chillies were, Cayenne, Jalapeno, Santa Fe Grande, Sweet Banana, Thai Orange, Apache, Rocoto Orange:

I’ve learned from my mistakes! So its Gloves:

The prepared Chillies, Garlic and Shallots:

The Packed jar after Blanching everything for a couple of minutes, sprinkled in a few corriander seeds and black peppercorns and a couple of Cardamon pods:

The filled jar (ikea jars Leak!! Grrrr!):

1/ All ingredients were washed and sliced
2/ everything was blanched in boiling water for not more than 2 mins, probably less.
3/ A cup of White Wine vinegar, half a cup of sugar, and a teaspoon of salt were boiled up gently until everything was dissolved.
4/ The preserving jar was packed tightly with all the ingredients and the hot vinegar solution poured over to cover and the jar sealed.

5/ *remember not to put anything you care about in an Ikea Jar!* I’ll have to transfer the contents to a real jar at some point if I don’t eat everything within a month! 🙂

BTW, I did see something like this recipe done on www.chillisgallore.co.uk but I forget who did it, thanks for the idea 🙂

nearly forgot, here’s the Rocoto I put in with all its lovely black seeds 🙂

I just made the most tasty spicy sauce, it looks like thick green slime but it tastes lovely.

Here’s what I made it out of:

• 1 Bunch of Fresh Coriander (a good fist full)
• 1 Rocoto Chilli and a load of small Cayenne chillies
• 4 or 5 large cloves of Garlic
• 1 small Carrot
• 1 teaspoon of Cumin powder
• about 3 or 4 Tablespoons of soft brown sugar
• 1 Teaspoon of Honey
• Half a teaspoon of my own ground mixed Chilli powder
• 1 Teaspoon of salt
• about 100ml of Cider Vinegar
• about 100ml of Lemon juice
• half a teaspoon of Ground Ginger
• Black Pepper corns to taste (so that probably means about a teaspoon full)
• a couple of Cardamom pods
• and about a teaspoon of mixed Pickling spices

It was all slapped in the blender and whizzed up until smooth-ish, then brought to the boil in a pan and simmered for 2-3 minutes before bottling in a sterilized glass beer bottle with the old fashioned style of toggle fastener thingy! (like a Grolsch bottle) It made about 375ml of sauce. 🙂
Its tangy and sweet with a lovely coriander and garlic taste and the heat of the chillies comes through after. I have no idea how long it will keep but I intend to leave it a couple of weeks at least before tasting it properly.

 ‘Pdtnc’s Purple Tiger Hot Sauce’

My crop of Purple Tiger Chilli’s has just gone into my first ever attempt at Hot Chilli Sauce. I had a quick taste before I sealed the bottles up and it was really damn tasty, the garlic and lime really come through followed by some lovely heat! Mmmm!!! 🙂 The recipe I used is a ‘mix and match’ of 2 or 3 other recipes I read from the good people at Chillis Galore.

Ingredients:

• 2 hands full of chillies, Purple Tiger, Cayenne, and a couple of Jalapeno’s all de-stemed.
• 1 fresh lime to be juiced, and I put the mushy bits in too.
• 150 ml of Cider Vinager (a little more added after blending).
• 1 medium carrot chopped.
• 2 Cloves of Garlic chopped.
• 2 small shallots (little onions you use to make pickled onions from, these made my eyes sting way too much!).
• 1/4 Teaspoon of Ginger.
• 1/4 Teaspoon of Oregano.
• 1/4 Teaspoon of Coriander.
• 1/4 Teaspoon of Cumin.
• 1/4 Teaspoon of Curry Powder.
• A few grinds of Black Pepper.
• 1 1/2 Teaspoon of Salt.
• 6 or 7 Teaspoons of Sugar.

What do to:

Wash your hands and the carrot 😉 Make sure all your bottles are sterilized by boiling them in a pan with erm Boiling water! 😉
Then roughly chop up all the ingredients and Juice the lime.
Dump the lot in the Blender and whiz it all up until smooth, transfer the brown mushy stuff to a small pan, bring to the boil and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Make sure you take a really deep breath from the blender just after liquidizing 😀 😀 😉 Ha ha ha Muahahaaaahhaaaaa!!! 😀

Here’s the photos from the process, just a shame you didn’t get to taste it 😉

I suppose I should age this a short while before actually using it, apparently it gets hotter with age 🙂

This time I was prepared with rubber gloves! And yet I still managed to make my hands burn a little.
I tried White Wine / Cider Vinegar this time and made 3 jars of pickled chillies each with a different mix of either vinegar and pickling spices. I’ll maybe be cracking open a jar next week for a tasting 🙂
The chillies I used were a mix of Thai Bangkok Upright, Rocoto Orange, Cayenne, with some tiny little Purple Tiger’s. I find the Rocoto make a very fine pickled chilli and are rather tasty. 🙂

I’ve been reading about this on www.chillisgalore.co.uk and it sounded nice, the actual results are even better than expected and its really more-ish.
Here’s the pictures of what I did… using my home grown Cayenne pepper 🙂
Step 1, The Preparation: I ground up some of my Cayenne Peppers and made some pretty fine powder.

Step 2, The Chocolate: I’d probably buy some different dark chocolate next time.

Step 3, Cover a tray in Tinfoil and I really lightly greased this with a bit of butter.

Step 4, Heat a small basin in a pan full of water to melt the chocolate, realising that I seem to be making a bit of a mess of it, and probably should be in charge of a pan all by my self! 😀 At this messy stage when it seemed to have melted as much as it could I added just the tip of a Teaspoon of my Cayenne pepper and mixed it up as good as i could.

Step 5, yep, its a mess alright!!! I don’t think Bournville chocolate was made for re-melting!

And even the spoons got it! Still, they had to be ‘cleaned’ afterwards *Yum* 😉

Step 6, Spread it on the tray with a knife, it actually spread quite well! I then put it in the fridge to chill down.

A worthy experiment as its blooming tasty stuff 🙂
At this rate I’m going to need a recipe category! (infact i might just!)

Oh yeah, Step 7, Eat 🙂

Its burns, It Burns…. make it Stop!!!

Following a simple recipe from picklehead at http://www.chillisgalore.co.uk I have just made myself 2 Jars of pickled Chilli’s.
I used my home grown Cayenne (green and red), Rocoto Orange, Thai Bangkok Upright, and a couple of varieties I bought from The South Devon Chilli Farm Santa Fe Grande, Ring Of Fire, and Pimentos de Padron. I bought the latter ones to try out some cooking idea’s and to try my tastes for future growing next year.
Needless to say I didn’t expect to be nursing my hands under the cold tap now, I guess it must be the vinegar (acid) that lets the Capsaicin soak into and through the upper layers of skin… and WOW!!! Does it hurt! Burns like hell !!!
I have leant my lesson now, its rubber gloves at the ready for next time… pheeew!!!
Here’s some pictures of some of the proccess:

Making sure the Jars are Stirile.

Blanching the Chilli’s.

The Fruit and pain of my Labours…!

I actually made 2 jars… 😉
You can find the recipe for the pickled chilli’s here.