'Nero Fiddles Hot Sauce

 We are about halfway through September and the garden is still throwing habanero peppers like it's mad at us. The Wife is making noises about giving some of them away, and that just won't do. So I decided to make a hot sauce recipe that uses two dozen peppers a batch. I did. This one is a real roller coaster ride. It's like a Saturday morning with a six-year old in the house. It starts off nice and pleasant and then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose. That's the best way I can describe it. More specifically, it's got a bright, slightly fruity taste. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. I could probably make some absolutely deadly hot-wings. Possibly add a few drops to a Bloody Mary. Maybe just drink it straight if I wanted to scream for a while. Basically a lovely flavor plays around in your mouth as you burn.

This recipe will yield 1-1/2 pints of sauce. If you own a Insta-Pot Ace blender, you can actually do everything but the canning step in the blender by running the puree program. 

Give it a spin and tell me what you think, as long as it's positive. As always, notes are in blue.

'Nero Fiddles Hot Sauce

Ingredients

• 2 dozen habanero peppers, stems removed (don't you even think about removing the seeds, you big baby)
• 2 red bell peppers, chopped
• 1 white onion, chopped
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup white vinegar
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 1/4 cup white tequila (if you don't do alcohol, just omit and split the difference between more vinegar and lime juice)

Directions

1. Put all the ingredients in a blender. Blend until smooth.
2. Pour contents of blender into a non-reactive pot. Heat to a simmer for about 10 minutes. 
3. Return to the blender (or use an immersion blender) to ensure everything is totally liquefied. 
4. If you're not going to can this sauce, you're done. 

   

   Fire in the hole!

5. If you are canning, fill three half pint jars to 1/4 inch headspace and secure lid and ring. Process in a boiling water bath for about 12-15 minutes. As always, review canning procedures at The National Center for Home Food Preservation to make sure you don't accidentally poison anyone. 

Good times!

Cucumber-Jalapeno Hot Sauce

 Holy shit did the garden throw a lot of cucumbers at us. There's only so many cucumber sandwiches, or tomato/cucumber/onion salad you can eat. I decided to use the vast surplus along with the bumper crop of jalapenos were also blessed with. The end result was a rock-solid hot sauce. It starts with an unmistakable cucumber flavor. Then the heat builds quickly but then levels off with a nice sweet finish. This would be great with fish or chicken. Or, as The Wife prefers, unceremoniously shoveled into her gob with Aldi Lime Nacho Chips. To each their own. This recipe will yield about 2-1/2 pints of sauce. 

Cucumber-Jalapeno Hot Sauce
aka Green Meanie

Ingredients

• 2 decent sized cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and chopped
• 12 jalapenos, chopped (I suppose if you're a HUGE BABY you could seed them to cut down on the heat, but then why are you even looking at a hot sauce recipe?)
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 3/4 cup water
• 2 cups white wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon dry cilantro
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon amchoor (dried mango) powder

Directions

1. In a medium pot, combine all ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer for about 10 minutes.
2. Pour mixture into a blender or use an immersion blender to blend until as smooth as possible.
3. Feel free to strain the sauce if you want something closer to a liquid-only hot sauce, or leave it as-is for something closer to a thin salsa.
4. If you plan on canning this sauce, we went with 5 half pint jars, 1/4" headspace, and 12 minutes in the boiling water bath. As always please go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation and brush up on canning so you don't accidentally kill anyone.

Good times!

Foil Packet Lime Tilapia

Sometimes I get inspired to cook, but not to spend a bunch of time cooking. This leads to interesting choices. This particular choice let me to take an old standard of foil pack fish (basically en papillote) but make my own sauce for it. The end result was good news / bad news. The good news was the recipe worked and was fast, simple, and tasty. The bad news is that it looks like absolute hell. I don't know. Close your eyes when you eat it or something.

Foil Packet Lime Tilapia

Ingredients

• 3 tilapia filets (about 4-6 ounces each)
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1-1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon Ponzu sauce
• 1-1/2 tablespoons lime juice
• 3 large chive, chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/2 pound frozen broccoli
• 3 Key Limes, quartered

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375F (190C, Gasmark 5)
2. In a bowl, combine the sour cream, garlic powder, Ponzu, lime juice, red pepper, and chive. Stir to incorporate all the ingredients.
3. Cut 3 sheets of aluminum foil into about 8-10" squares. Lay a piece of tilapia in each square.
4. Figure out some way to turn the foil into an envelope of some description. You can always watch the video (at the bottom of this post) to see the highly technical method I use.
5. Divide the broccoli between the 3 packets. Place the packets on a baking sheet.
6. Pour the sour cream mix evenly into each packet. Seal the packet.
7. Bake for 25 minutes. 

BONUS VIDEO CONTENT!

Good Times!

Black Bean Mango Lime Slaw

     It's always fun to order cole slaw at restaurants. There is no middle ground in the quality. It either tastes great, or it tastes like an old dishrag. It's either drowning in vinegar and oil, or it's buried in mayo. Only the truly adventurous pick cole slaw as a side when they eat out. Nobody ever says, "Hey, let's go to this restaurant, they have really fucking great cole slaw." I'm not even sure what convinced me to make this. We were considering fish tacos for dinner and it struck me that they would benefit from some slaw. Not just any slaw, mind you. This would be a slaw for the ages. An UberSlaw. I have to tell you, this was some damned good slaw. Thank me later. As always, notes are in blue.

Black Bean Mango Lime Slaw

Ingredients

• 1 bag (about 1 pound) cole slaw mix (feel free to shred cabbage, red cabbage and carrot if you want to make your own mix. I was feeling fairly lazy. Just make sure it's around a pound.)
• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 1 mango, chopped
• 1 can (14.5 ounce) black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinaigrette
•  1/2 teaspoon Ukrainian Village seasoning from Spice House (follow the link for a list of what's in it if you don't want to order it)
• optional: (this is not actually optional unless you're a big baby) 1 jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped

Directions

1. In a large bowl, mix the first four ingredients (and the jalapeno if you're a sexual tyrannosaurus, just like me).
2. In a smaller bowl, mix the last three ingredients.
3. Pour the contents of the smaller bowl into the larger bowl.
4. Toss to incorporate ingredients. Refrigerate for a couple of hours.
5. HOW EASY WAS THAT?

Good Times!

Slow Cooker Margarita Chicken and Black Beans

     I'm pretty sure there's about 150,000 different slow-cooker Mexican style chicken recipes floating around the interwebz, so I figured why not add another? This particular recipe assembles quickly and makes for a fairly versatile meal. We served it over rice, in tortillas and as a nacho topping. Just make sure to drain off any excess liquid if you're using it in tortillas, tacos or nachos, otherwise everything will get soggy. This is very mild. I wound up adding habanero hot sauce to mine, but I really like the heat. As always, any notes are in blue.

Slow Cooker Margarita Chicken
and Black Beans

Ingredients

• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken
• 1 can (15 ounces) black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 can stewed tomatoes, with liquid
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1/2 bell pepper, chopped (any color is fine; we used red)
• 1 tablespoon pepper in adobo sauce (you can find these canned in the ethnic section of most grocery stores)
• 2 ounces tequila (optional if booze isn't your thing)
• 1 tablespoon lime juice (I used the stuff from the little plastic lime. I love that sort of thing)
• 1 teaspoon Pilsen Latino Seasoning (from The Spice House)
• for those who don't have access to the above seasoning, it includes: coarse Kosher flake salt, garlic & onion powders, Mexican oregano, Tellicherry black pepper, hot red pepper flakes.

Directions

1. Place chicken in bottom of slow cooker.
2. Unceremoniously dump all other ingredients on top of chicken.
3. Give a quick stir. Cook on LOW 6-8 hours.
4. Remove chicken from cooker, shred and return to cooker. 

UPDATE: Now there's a YouTube video for this recipe!

Too Damned Easy Ceviche

     I discovered ceviche at our favorite Mexican restaurant. As you know, I count all of my calories, so I was looking for something that wouldn't break the bank. I found their Ceviche Bowl. It was just vegetables and shrimp with some crackers on the side. I had it and was hooked. I figured there's not much to making it they way they do, so I'd try to make it at home. For the $12 they charged at the restaurant, I can buy enough ingredients to make four! I know that many versions of ceviche use fish that is cooking in the acids of the citrus, but I'm keeping it simple and just parroting what I got in the restaurant. As always, any notes are in blue. 

Too Damned Easy Ceviche

Ingredients

• 12 ounces frozen shrimp, defrosted and tails removed (Don't throw the tails away! Boil them in some water and make yourself some shrimp stock to freeze for another day!)
• 2 avocados, cut into into 3/4" cubes (if you did this without first pitting the avocado and scooping it from the shell, just put everything away and go order a pizza)
• 1/2 large red onion, chopped
• 2 medium roma tomatoes, chopped
• 1 medium cucumber, peeled and diced
• 1 tablespoon lime juice (the stuff from the little plastic lime is fine)
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 medium jalapenos, diced (if you're a wuss and can't handle the heat, throw the seeds away. If you are a stud like myself, leave them in)
• 1 teaspoon salt (I actually had some pink Himalayan salt on hand and went with that)

Directions

1. Put all ingredients except avocado and salt in a large bowl. Toss to incorporate ingredients (I will not be held responsible for overenthusiastic tossing)
2. Add avocado and sprinkle salt. Lightly toss to incorporate (I held the avocado back because it tends to get mushed up if you toss it too much. Ideally you want the cubes of avocado to remain cube-shaped. This is one of the few times where I actually worry about presentation. To me, ceviche should taste and LOOK clean)
3. Serve up in a small bowl or goblet with nacho chips (or as I've seen in several restaurants, with packs of Saltine crackers)

Good times!

She Simmers Caribbean-Style Sauce via Hot Sauce!

     Apparently I need to visit the Caribbean at some point. So many wonderful sauces come out of that area! This particular riff on the style is out of the Hot Sauce! cookbook. I love this sauce so much. There is so much going on here, flavor-wise. It is reminiscent of a jerk sauce, but to me has a fun mix of flavors. The best way I can explain it is everything in here is fighting to get noticed. Imagine a bar-room brawl and all the spices are slapping each other around. Then the habanero busts in the front door and starts breaking chairs over everyone and throwing them out windows. It's just like that, but in your mouth. As always, notes and changes are in blue.

She Simmers
via Hot Sauce!

Ingredients

• 6 fresh red, yellow, or orange habanero chiles (I used mostly red and one orange. They were also frozen from last season. As long as they were fresh at one time you should be fine)
• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (for all of the freshly squeezed juices, you can more than likely get away with bottled, but the flavor will not be quite the same. The main reason I did the freshly squeezed was because my aunt Ruthie bought us an electric reamer for our wedding. As much as that sounds like a marital aid, it's not. Just Google "orange reamer" and settle down, you pervert)
• 1/2 cup distilled white vinegar
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper (I will tell you right now, grinding them by hand is a Colossal Pain In The Ass. Next time I'll just use the coffee bean grinder. I just have to remember to clean it out or the wife will be Righteously Pissed when she goes to make coffee)
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground or freshly grated nutmeg (I went with the ground)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Stem and seed the habaneros, reserving the seeds. Combine the chiles and all of the remaining ingredients in a blender and puree until silky. Taste and add a sprinkling of the seeds if you want to ratchet up the heat (be careful when you're doing this. It doesn't take too many seeds to change the heat level from "pleasant burn" to "OH MY GOD, THIS WILL EVENTUALLY REACH MY SPHINCTER.")
2. Pour into bottles. (I processed mine in a half pint jar for 15 minutes in a boiling water bath for long term storage. As always, please read up on canning at the National Center for Home Food Preservation before attempting canning. This sauce can tear up your insides just fine without the help of harmful bacteria.)

Good times!

Jalapeno Sauce via Hot Sauce!

     Our garden is producing peppers at such a rate that we have had to get creative in using them up. I can only freeze so many peppers. It was only a matter of time before I turned to a book the wife got me for Christmas. She knows I love hot sauces, so she figured she'd be irresponsible and give me a manual on how to make them at home. That manual, Hot Sauce!, is indispensable to someone starting out making hot sauces. Up to this point, I have only ever really made a couple pepper pastes, fondly called Master Ridley, Latimer (bonus points if you understand why I used these names), and a concoction known as Shrieking Anus Paste. It was time to branch out. My first attempt at a new recipe would be the Jalapeno Sauce from the book. It made sense since the garden is dropping a dozen large jalapenos a day. So how is this sauce? It has a very bright flavor, almost like salsa verde, but with a fierce punch of heat right up front. The flavor and heat play well together.

This is a fairly accurate depiction of my wife trying out the sauce.

     In the end, the overall flavor of the sauce is more than worth the initial burn. I popped a can of this when a friend came over for dinner. He and my wife ate over half a pint of this stuff, just scooping it up with nachos. The thickness of the sauce will vary from batch to batch, depending on the size of the peppers you use. The larger the peppers, the more this will lean toward a very thin salsa. Smaller peppers and it becomes more of a straight sauce. As always, any changes or notes will be in blue.

Jalapeno Sauce
via Hot Sauce! by Jennifer Trainer Thompson

Ingredients

• 12 fresh jalapeno chiles, stemmed and cut into chunks (use bigger peppers if you want a thicker sauce)
• 1 medium yellow onion, peeled
• 2 cups distilled white vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled
• Juice of 1 lime
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves (we worried the cilantro would overpower the sauce, so we went with a little over 1/4 cup)

Directions

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a blender and puree.

   

   Fire in the hole!

2. Transfer the puree to a nonreactive saucepan (if you're not familiar with the term, enameled or stainless steel pans are nonreactive. What happens if you use a reactive pan?) 

   

   It's probably better if you don't use a reactive pan.

   Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Let cool, then pour into bottles. You can eat it right away or place in sealed bottles for future use (we packed ours in half pint jars and processed in a boiling water bath for about 15 minutes. Again, read up on canning if you haven't done it before. I will continue to state that I'm not responsible when you inevitably poison yourself.)

Good times!

Monday Recipe: Salmon and Shrimp in Chili-Lime Tomato Sauce

     Normally I like to work from a recipe. I may make omissions and substitutions or add something here and there, but I like to have that framework to build on. Sometimes, I just wing it. This was one of those times.  Last week I wanted something fairly low in calories but big on flavor. I wanted to feel like I was really eating something substantial.  I figured that chili-lime was a classic combo. However, I decided on an alternative lime source. I thought Rose's Lime juice from the bar would be a nice compliment to the sriracha and sweet onion. I was right. This was fantastic and healthy to boot!

Salmon and Shrimp in Chili-Lime Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

• 4 salmon fillets
• 1/2 lb. medium shrimp, cleaned and de-tailed
• 1 large, sweet onion, diced
• 1 rib celery, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 pints tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 tablespoon Sriracha sauce
• 1 teaspoon Rose's Lime Juice
• 1 tablespoon heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon grapeseed oil

Directions

1. Heat olive oil in pan, add garlic, celery and onion. Saute until tender. 3-5 minutes.
2. Take medium saucepan. Add tomatoes.  Stir in basil, Sriracha, and Rose's Lime. Blitz with an immersion blender until smooth. Add onion, celery and garlic. Bring to boil, lower to simmer and let simmer uncovered for about 25 minutes.
3. While sauce is simmering, heat grapeseed oil in pan and cook salmon on medium heat until fish flakes easily with a fork. Add shrimp near end of cooking time and cook until pink.
4. Take immersion blender and blend sauce until smooth, add heavy cream and stir. 
5. Put salmon on plate, place shrimp on salmon. Cover with tomato sauce.

Serves 4 (or two really hungry people)

Good times!