So far I’ve made three hot sauces, with more on the way.

Tropical Chipotle Sauce – see previous post here.

Green Papaya Chilli Sauce
This is an uncooked sauce, which apparently can be stored in the fridge for up to six months. I put half a dozen of my red bonnet peppers in it, not the 12 they suggest. The peppers seem to quite variable in heat, and the sauce wasn’t super-hot, but it has heaps of garlic. Recipe here.

Habanero and Pineapple Sauce
This is my favourite so far. It has turmeric, allspice and cinnamon which work surprisingly well. I used one habanero and 4 or 5 of the bonnet peppers. The recipe says “perfect with chicken wings” and I reckon it will be! Recipe here.

I’m going to make a Caribbean-style jerk sauce next. I also bought several tins of mangoes as the fresh one haven’t been available down here since Easter. So there’ll be more tropical sauces, that’s for sure. Stay tuned

I was given a bunch of these chillies this week so I thought I’d dive into making hot sauce! I’ve made BBQ sauces quite a few times, mainly from or inspired by the ones in this book. I can’t find it in print any more. It has 8 basic sauces from different regions in the US.

Thanks to Eat Your Books, I can search my 100+ cookbooks for recipes by ingredient. Thinking these were scotch bonnet chillies, I found some recipes in my cookbooks and then went looking for a few more online. All in all about 15 recipes to choose from. So I then went shopping to collect a heap of ingredients (only to find that suddenly there are NO mangoes in the shops)…. 

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At the end of summer we’re pickling all kinds of things. Here are a few that we’ve bottled.

Stephanie’s Bread & Butter Zucchini Pickles from The Cook’s Companion

This of course is a cooking Bible and therefore essential in every kitchen. We had a surfeit of yellow squash and I was looking for a simple pickle that was not too tangy. This is perfect as it is just like a relish.

Toss together the following in a bowl and cover with water. Leave for an hour.

1 kg zucchini or squash, sliced
3 onions, finely sliced
1/2 cup salt

Drain the vegetables well and return to the bowl.

Meanwhile combine the following in a saucepan and bring to the boil.

3 cups white wine vinegar
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tbsp yellow mustard seeds
1 tsp dry mustasrd
2 tsp ground turmeric

Pour over the vegetables and put in sterilised bottles and refrigerate.

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For the first time in a few years I made a batch of mustards for Christmas to give to family and friends. This neat little book, “Mustard” by Janet Hazen contains heaps of simple and tasty mustard recipes.

As you can see I made five different kinds of mustard. The Muscovado (dark brown sugar) and Muscat was a bit of a variation on the book, otherwise I followed the recipes.

So here’s one of them, probably my favourite.

Herbed Tomato Mustard

1/3 cup whole yellow mustard seeds, finely ground
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tbsp water
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp each dried basil, oregano and chervil
About 1/2 cup tomato, peeled, seeded and finely chopped
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Puree all of the ingredients in a blender until smooth. Place in a jar and allow 2 weeks for the flavours to blend.