This is a bowl of chillies from our garden.
All of them are hot, the yellow habañero ridiculously so, and the red birdseyes not far behind. The green birdseyes are from a branch that we accidentally pruned off, and the large green one is from a shrub that I bought on spec from the markets.
Apart from herbs, these chillies are the only real produce coming from our newly established garden, and I’m inordinately proud of them. There’s at least another twenty red chillies ripening on the birdseye bush, and more habañero on the way.
I turned this crop into a wickedly good chilli sauce using a recipe from Choclette, tweaking the ingredients slightly to suit what we had in the pantry. As we had far fewer chillies than specified, our sauce is quite mild, and perfect for everyday use. It’s a very flexible recipe, which I’m sure could be worked to suit whatever chillies your garden provides you with. Here’s our version – the original is on Choclette’s blog…
- hot chillies – I used the ones in the photo above
- 2 red capsicums (bell peppers)
- 250g Spanish or brown onions, peeled and chopped
- 8 large cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
- 2 large apples – I used Pink Ladies – peeled, cored and chopped
- 3 bay leaves
- several sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked
- 300ml white wine vinegar
- 2 teaspoons fine sea salt
1. Grill the capsicums over a flame or in the oven until blackened and blistered. Place these into a large bowl and cover the top of the bowl with clingfilm or foil. Allow the capsicums to rest until softened, then rub off the blackened skin. Deseed, then cut into chunks.
2. Halve and deseed the chillies (I wear gloves). If you’d like to reduce their heat further, rinse the deseeded halves under cold running water.
3. Place the chillies, capsicums, onions, garlic, apple and herbs into a large stock pot with 500ml water. Bring the pot to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for half an hour, adding more water if required.
4. Add the vinegar and sea salt, and simmer for an additional half an hour or more, until the ingredients are soft and pulpy and well combined.
5. Ladle the sauce into a blender and puree until smooth. Return to the stock pot and taste for flavour, adding extra salt or vinegar if required.
6. Pour the sauce into sterilised bottles and process in a hot water bath for 20 minutes. We stood our bottles in a tall pasta pot, and filled it with boiling water up to the base of the bottle lids.
This was so delicious that I had it on pizza tonight, before the bottles had even cooled. It’s quite reminiscent of Mexican style sauces, with a clean, pure taste that allows the chilli flavour to shine through. As soon as the next crop of chillies are ripe, I’ll be making this again. Thanks, Choclette!
Click here for a printable version of this recipe
Celia, so pleased you’ve made this. What a great looking bowl of chillies and the bottles of sauce look pretty good too. Interesting that you didn’t use arrowroot, I wonder what difference that might make? I’ve noticed that the sauce pours very well leaving the bottle quite clean rather than most of the mixture sticking to the sides. I’ve always put that down to the arrowroot, but could be wrong.
Choclette, I’ve never been a fan of adding thickeners to my sauces and preserves, preferring instead to cook them down until they reach the consistency I want. This sauce thickened well, probably because of the extra apple, so it didn’t need arrowroot (which I didn’t have anyway! :)). Great recipe – we’ve already finished a bottle!
Celia where did you get the bottles? the tops look new so don’t look recycled. Roz
Roz, let me share with you one of my most exciting suppliers! :)
I buy all my jars and bottles new from Plasdene – they have outlets all over Australia (including Hobart), and the best range of glass containers. When Pete first started making jam, the only jars we could find were $2.50 each, which was outrageous – it was cheaper to buy jam from the supermarket, throw out the contents and reuse the jars! I now buy 300ml salsa jars, with pop top lids, for just 75c each (incl GST) – I also buy extra lids, as we recycle the jars, but not the lids.
When I was last at Plasdene, they had the gorgeous bottles you see in the post, and I was also able to buy tamper proof lids for them. Pete was reluctant to get them, but they were a clearance item, and including the lids cost me under 50c each. I couldn’t resist, and we’ve already used them for chilli sauce and plumbeena. :)
http://www.plasdene.com.au
Cheers, Celia
Thanks Celia, just checked back on this post to see if you answered and of course you did, will look into Plasdene immediately. Just made a batch of Passata, totally different method to yours, don’t you just love the different ways you can approach the same thing…
Roz, that’s outrageously serendipitous – your comment came in just as I was posting about tomato passata.. :)
I was admiring your glass jars last time you posted about your plum jam and plum sauce. Thinking, they look so good with all the matching shapes and lids. I can’t believe you found somewhere that sells them so cheap! (I did actually run into the supermarket one night, grabbed a cheap jar of jam just so I could get rid of the contents to fill it up with mine- I had a quest and was determined to finish it!)
Got my first bag of strong bakers flour from Auburn yesterday too- thanks for that tip as well :-)
Chippy, Plasdene is soooo much fun, but they now have a $100 minimum purchase for cash sales. It used to be $50, but went up last year. We buy in bulk once or twice a year, but it’s hard if you don’t need heaps of jars and bottles. I’ll let you know if I ever find a cheap source for a smaller quantity. So glad to hear you got your flour – did you have fun at Harkola? :)
Celia, I generally prefer to keep things as “natural” as possible so am not a big fan of thickeners either, but I do use arrowroot – mainly because it’s meant to be “good” for you. Am impressed you’ve used up a bottle already.
What was great about your recipe was that it didn’t have tomato – so many other chilli sauce recipes I looked at were tomato based. That means it works well with Asian foods as well as Mexican etc.. :)
That looks seriously good! Haven’t planned to grow chiles this year, but maybe I should! I tend to buy mysterious bottles of sauce from Water Sky in Bristol.
Btw if you have any readers in the UK http://www.jamjarshop.com has a huge and wonderful selection of jam jars, bottles, labels, ingredients, big containers of wine vinegar etc etc.
The elderflowers will be out soon and maybe this year I will make elderflower cordial. That would be a first….
Thanks for the recipe Celia. Sounds like a great addition to pizzas and just about anything else!
that is a great looking sauce! love the roasted peppers in there!
Well, having bought 2 bottles from our local cookshop for peanuts, I thought this would be a wonderful use for them.
I’ve followed your mode exactly here, Celia, only because my mix didn’t look as though it needed thickening, Choclette :)
& your recipe has proved to be a doddle.
My husband came into the kitchen wondering what delights we had for dinner, after my charring the peppers under the grill and cooking the sauce up.
So thank you to Choclette and to Celia. That’s a darned tasty sauce ……………… for a-top of a beef burger, as I had it last night.
Zingy!
I’ll have to keep it in the fridge as my bottles are “grolsh” hinged lid types, with bored holes in the neck, so I cannot seal them properly from the outside world.
Here it is, I’m just about to read the Sunday papers: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Coq5QJzJlwljYOgmqDn7CA?feat=directlink
Gill, what a great photo! Gorgeous bottle too! All credit to Choclette, that recipe is delicious, and as you pointed out, very easy to make.. :)
Hi I was wondering if you could give me some idea exactly how many chillies to use for this recipe……………..chris
I’m sorry Chris, it was a year and a half ago now, and I didn’t weigh them at the time. It really was all the ones in the photo above though…
Thanks for replying anyway, after I posted the question I thought about it and came to the same conclusion, it worked out anyhow………thanks again.
chris