Oven roasted habanero sauce

Super easy and healthier than boiling style!  (As nutrients are more preserved.)  Just freeze or eat fresh.  Making this sauce is just like you bake or oven roast veggies - then use a blender stick.  

I used feijoias and guavas from bach we were staying on. So amazing to use resources picked from the land.  I had brought chillies I had grown - an ice cream bucket full, and bought bell peppers, garlic, onions.  (Photo below shows all the beautiful ingredients that went into this oven roasted habanero chilli sauce.)

Homemade sauces taste so much better as they are fresh and didn't need preservatives to guarantee their safety long-term.  This sauce tasted amazing and as roasting was easier/healthier - won't be boiling sauces anytime soon!

METHOD 

I just cut up and baked 3 glass trays of ingredients one after the other in the oven until you could smell their nice smell and were soft.  First just chillies as had so many.  Sprinkled sea salt and pepper. Then the onions and garlic. Sprinkled sea salt and pepper.  Then fruit both kinds with a sprinkle of sugar over top to aid in caramellisation. If less ingredients onions garlic could go together.  Wouldn't do fruit together  with chillies actually. 

Didn't overcook especially chillies so nutrients intact.  Allowed to cool then blended.  I also added the juice of two lemons.  We added about 1 cup of vinegar.

THE ONLY PROBLEM was the bloody guava pips, when your teeth find them!  Would remove these next time even after cooked - or not use guavas.

PS - these are guavas - hadn't used them before - wouldn't need to remove skins as they are soft, I did, but this is optional.

INGREDIENTS

TRAY 1 (chillies)

All chillies cored, deseeded, cut into roughly equal pieces (photo above - before cooking):

18 Thai chilli peppers mostly green a few red. 
2 jalapeño chillies. 
6 habanero chillies insides of flesh scraped (tamed). 
5.5 bell peppers. 

Coat with just enough oil and and sea salt and pepper and bake in glass oven tray on oven at 200 until well roasted. 


TRAY 2 (onion garlic)

2 red onions diced
2 bunches garlic diced 

Coat with just enough oil and sea salt and pepper and bake in glass oven transfer oven at 200 until soft.  

After cooked, I poured in to the bowl with chillies (photo below, both chillies and onions, garlic cooked).

TRAY 3 (fruit)

Scoop out flesh 10-12 feijoas
Cut up 25 guavas. 

Chop roughly, put in an oven tray with a sprinkle of sugar, bake until caramelised. 

Photo above - the glass tray I cooked everything in (with both guava and feijoa after baking)- sequentially!

When all cooked put in same large bowl, whizz together with blend stick.  Add juice of two lemons.  

Add 1 cup vinegar. 

Freeze or use straightaway fresh!

How to make chilli jam

Ingredients:

600g cut up chilllies or capsicums (peppers), any kind. 

1 cup vinegar 

5 cups sugar (helps preserve as bugs don't like all the sugar)
1/2 pouch Hansells Jam Setting Mix (from supermarket (pectin for thickening, made from apples). Method:

Cut up and core 600g of chillies (if I have picked a bit more I just add a bit more vinegar and sugar and setting stuff proportionally) no worries. Wear gloves or will have painful fingers.

The heat of your jam will be from this choice here.   Mild - 4 med sized capsicum, 4-5 capsicum.  Med - mostly Thai chillies.  Moderate and divine - add a Habanero with inside white interior scraped away (tamed that is where heat us stored). etc!

Blend with 1 cup vinegar - add half chillies and all vinegar, blend, than add the other half.

Pour into large pot with 5 cups sugar in it. Stir. DON'T ADD PECTIN YET.

Boil 10 min, turn up to max then turn down to gentle boil. Put clean jars into oven at 160 degrees C to kill bugs. I wipe sides with wet scraper to avoid possible crystallisation with unmixed sugar falling in at wrong time. 

Then add pectin made into paste just before adding (or gets thick) stir well and count to 60. Take off heat.

At this point you pour into hot sterile bottles, to 1 cm from top. Pour slowly as hot bottles will fizz the stuff up. USE A GLASS MEASURING CUP or something small to pour into jar. I still have a scar where sticky jam danged onto my arm. You can't get sticky boiling stuff off in time.

Pour then cap using a tea towel or something, stick on windowsill or wherever. You will hear a POP which is the oxygen leaving the bottle as it vacuum seals. When it cools label with pride.

How to make your own perfect beeswax wraps with Lilybee's Make Your Own wax blocks (already perfectly formulated with the tree resin and jojoba oil in it - the hard part)

Beeswax wraps! 

THE WAX

I have done this before with a class of young children, grating up pure beeswax.  They keep the air out, but are a bit brittle, and the grating method was NOT easy.  The easiest way is just to melt down the block, and then brush it onto the wraps.  Then you place a pile of the wraps in the oven at 80 degrees to further soak in.  When you hang them up, just have newspapers below!

The wax also needs the tree resin - to make it stickier, and more supple, and the jojoba oil is antibacterial as used for food.  So if you buy already formulated wax blocks the hard part is already done.  It is then just a matter of getting your fabric pieces to soak up all the wax, then hang dry.  Wax is hard to get off your stuff so use sacrificial pans and things - I saved mine in a cloth bag for next time.

Order perfect blocks from this website (or your local):

https://www.lilybeewrap.com/collections/make-your-own-wraps



THE FABRIC

I found it really fun to use my own fabric, which I cut with pinking shears.  The fabric - the thinner the better, a thin cotton - not a thick one!  I had fun writing my own sayings on them as well.  You cut the edges out with pinking shears (those zig-zag ones), so the fabric won't fray (but not essential - the wax helps alot too).  That's just the proper way...  I did invest in the shears.

Here are the photos.  This can easily be made into a creative art project if you use white, and just let your kids draw something on them...  I even experimented with a watercolour painting on one, and it did work.  


PHOTOS

QUICK SUMMARY (from my Instagram post at the time)

I just bought 2 Lilybee large make-your-own-wraps wax blocks which made it easy. 

It already has tree resin to make it sticky and not brittle and jojoba oil for antibacterial properties. 

I just melted down on stove and painted onto wraps on hot cookie tray - one one top of another ' add another paint etc - then put back in oven 80 degrees for 10 min. The only tricky bit is handling the hot sticky wraps after. Hanging them quickly before wax solidifies funny on them! 

I had also written old wise sayings on them. One my son had made did leak ink through pile I would do such creative ones separately in future. 

And don't skimp on the wax!!! #beeswaxwraps

Atop cheese! Troy's saying: NORMAL IS OVERRATED