How to create amazing chilli sauces

After all this time of experimenting, making chilli sauces - as once I began growing chillies, I was hooked - I now know the general strategy for creating an easy, but the best ever, chilli sauce!

In short, you cut up all the ingredients which must involve tomatoes (fruit component), chillies (the heat), garlic and onion, and the best sauce has another sweet fruit as well like fejoia, guava.  All ingredients are coated with a vegetable oil like olive oil, with the tomatoes I baste them with a silicon brush across the top, but with the onion and garlic I shake around in a bowl.  I use pink Himalayan salt, pepper, and some curry powder across the top of the tomatoes, sugar across the sweet fruit - and bake them until really roasted well, then blitz them with some apple cider vinegar and sugar, boil for 5 min or so, then bottle.

I hate boiling now, as I feel baking or roasting preserves more nutrients - and love making soup in the same way now - roasting pumpkin with garlic and onion, all oiled, then blitzing.  Why would you want to boil something in water, then pour off the vitamins and nutrients in the water?!!!

I recently created a really successful one that we all love.  This is what I wrote about it on Insta:

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The sauce is warm and has heat, it dances on the palette so thus the name A Midsummer's Night Dream, recalling the heat of a warm summer wind.

I measure the recipe by large baking trays; it made 5 various size bottles (reused jam or pasta sauce bottles).  I baked the ingredients in the trays at 160 C fanbake until very cooked looking, and on baking paper so I could dump out the contents after grilled:

• 1 full size baking tray with quartered juicy (low acid) roma tomatoes (the two bags of tomatoes in the photo below), which I had basted along tops of tomatoes with oil, salted with pink Himalayan salt, sprinkled with curry powder and pepper 

• 1 full size baking tray with cut up 1 huge onion (shook with oil), 1 bunch of garlic cloves peeled (same oiled), and a bunch of little tomatoes cut up from my garden

• 1 small tray (1/3 sized) of fejoia flesh scooped out, sugar sprinkled over, baked - probably 10-12 fejoias scooped out

• THE HEAT: 2 full size baking trays of long, green chillies, deseeded, some were jalapenos, also oiled

I put grilled contents into a large metal bowl with a plate as lid until next day to finish off as prepping is alot of work (especially chillies, and MUST wear gloves, I wear gardening ones so I can wash them and reuse).  The next day I blend with stick blender, and some sugar (to taste) and a few cups vinegar (until saucey), then boil for a few minutes and bottle, reusing clean jars that I had put in oven at 100 C to sterilise.

Then I label! After tasting it...

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Ingredients that all went in to this sauce!

Pull out that core...

Deseeding setup

Before going in to the oven...

The trickiest part is definitely the deseeding of the chillies.  Over time I have gotten a feel for it, here is a video clip of my deseeding method:

Midway Island

 

The Kaipatiki Project (local conservation/education centre) shared this on Facebook - I felt I had to share it.

I read this introduction first:  

"This video is about an island in the ocean at 2000 km from any other coast line. Nobody lives, only birds and yet....You will not believe your eyes!!!!!!!"

Video on making artisan bread (no-knead bread)

Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron - sustainability message and parable of humankind

I love James Cameron's "final word". Just stumbled onto this - the others of the family were watching the final fate of the Titanic, and then James Cameron closed with this - watch from about 4 minutes on.


But I've typed up every word, anyways.

James Cameron:

"I've been working on Titanic for nearly 20 years. I planned this investigation to be my final word. It's time for me to pass the baton, and move on to some new challenges.

"But I'll never stop thinking about Titanic. For me it's so much more than simply an exercise in forensic archaeology. Part of the Titanic parable is of arrogance, of hubris, of this sense that we're too big to fail. Well, where have we heard that one before?

"There was this big machine, this human system that was pushing forward with so much momentum that it couldn't turn, it couldn't stop in time to avert a disaster. And that's what we have right now.

"Within that human system on board that ship, if you want to make it a microcosm for the world, you have different classes - you know you've got first class, second class, third class. Well, in our world right now you've got developed nations and undeveloped nations. You've got the starving millions who are going to be the ones most effected by the next iceberg that we hit - which is going to be climate change. We can see that iceberg ahead of us right now, but we can't turn. We can't turn because of the momentum of the system: political momentum, business momentum. There are too many people making money out the system the way the system works right now. And those people, you know, frankly have their hands on the levers of power and aren't ready to let'em go. Until they do, we're not going to be able to turn to miss that iceberg and we're going to hit it. When we hit it, the rich are still going to be able to get their access to food, to arable land, to water and so on, it's going to be the poor, it's going to be the steerage that are going to be impacted and it was the same with Titanic.

"And I think that's why this story will always fascinate people, because it's a perfect little encapsulation of the world and all social spectrum; but until our lives are really put at risk, the moment of truth, we don't know what we would do.

"And that's my final word."


By the way, I just realized who James Cameron is. I knew that Avatar contained an amazing message - but I didn't know that James Cameron had written it until recently. I really appreciate his wisdom, and clarity. Thank-you, James.

Shell profiteering climate change in the Arctic

http://greenpeace.org/savethearctic

On 24 Feb 2012, 7 people - including Lucy Lawless, occupied a Shell oil drilling ship to raise awareness about Shell drilling oil in the Arctic - a place only accessible due to climate change (caused by burning of fossil fuels such as oil). 77 hours later, they were arrested - but by that time 200,000 emails [March 4] were sent to Shell Oil by people protesting Shell's profiteering climate change (and also worsening climate change).


Lucy Lawless, NZ:

"I am here today acting on behalf of the planet and my children. Drilling for deep sea oil is bad enough, but to go into the Arctic, one of the most magical places left on the planet, is going too far.

"A melting of the sea ice is a warning to humanity, not an invitation to drill for more of the stuff which caused the problem in the first place.

"And yet Shell claims that they can manage a 90% cleanup of an oil spill in the harsh arctic, and I call BS. An oil spill in the Arctic would make the Gulf of Mexico [oil spill] look like a children's party.

"What Shell is doing is climate change profiteering. We don't have to go to the ends of the Earth to extract every last drop of oil. We've got to smarten up and move to a clean energy economy now."

"She's Alive... Beautiful... Finite... Hurting... Worth Dying for" movie

About 5 minutes - watch the whole thing. Says alot in 5 minutes.

Put together by Vivek Chauhan, with the Sanctuary Asia network (www.sanctuaryasia.com), using footage from Yann Arthus-Bertrand's film Home.

Plastic Bag Wrap (Video)

I love it.