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.
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.
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.
After returning to my life, where I actually had a life - I planted my garden to the best of my ability, even planting companion plants like basil between tomatoes - trying to establish herb areas, etc. We also added pine needles as mulch to the tomato plants - which did wonders! The clay heavy soil of our garden was balanced with acidic material. The chilli plants also did really well (also it was a very hot and dry, long summer).
Anyways, I then had to preserve the abundance, like tomatoes, and chillies.
A walk through my garden in February:
Preserving tomatoes - the easy way
Preserving is a huge amount of work!
I tried a fancy recipe by Wellness Mama, with fresh herbs, and boiling for hours, carrots, and putting a carrot in and removing it later to remove acidity. Although it was delicious, I just didn't have the energy to do that every time I had a bowl of tomatoes!
Wellness Mama pasta sauce!
Later on, a few friends had said they oven roast cut up tomatoes with garlic, onions etc. Then just freezing it. So I started doing that! Sometimes with fresh herbs from the garden, whole sprigs.
180 C for about 45 min (until done).
It was so much easier! I did freeze it usually before blending due to not having time - but when I needed to use it I could blend it. It was so delicious, and made it possible to preserve with far less energy.
Some of my tomatoes were the yellow type!
Fresh herbs from the garden - that I added, and also shared at work. I learned how to grow and harvest oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary...all things I actually wanted to use. No more growing things I don't actually use. I even was able to harvest some funny but useful carrots for some roasted sauces!
Preserving chillies
Shane and I went to a Mexican restaurant, and loved the green chilli sauce!
By far the most fun and exciting - addition to our lives, chilli sauces! Not hard to make either, just panfrying up cut up chillies, garlic and onions, and spices. USE GLOVES TO CUT UP THE CHILLIES by the way. I went without twice and not right away - became in extreme pain.)
I kept trying recipes for chilli sauces, starting with Green Gavin chutney sauce involving lots of spices like cumin and turmeric (and not blending it up after). They were all really good - but in the end although the heavily spiced sauces were amazing, realised that the green chilli sauce was probably not very spiced (I'm talking cumin, turmeric, ginger, coriander). I would still use the garlic and onion though! Going to try this later today, and will post up the results.
Here are a few versions I created, with a photo of how the cut up ingredients looked. One well liked one at the end was SPICE TRUCK that I did not photograph. (We named them so we could remember what worked better, what we liked, etc.) Basically I followed a basic recipe, amounts of chillies and garlic and oil roughly the same, and experimented with the spices.
Hot chilli chutney - from the Greening of Gavin blog.
But it involved frying for 15 min, and these ingredients: 450g chillies , 1 onion, 6 cloves garlic, 2 T ground cumin (was 4 but I reduced it), 2 T turmeric, 25g grated root ginger, 1 T salt, 3/4 cup olive oil, 3 T sugar, 1 1/4 cups white vinegar.
How it looked before frying.
How it looked after bottling! This sauce was VERY spicy and hot. Was amazing added to mayo - but extremely intense straight.
After this I realised I could blender it, and it would be more pleasant to use as a sauce - on cheese and crackers, or in cooking.
Nonnie's experimentations with chilli sauces, first one - Beauty
I carefully recorded what I did with this one, put alot of energy into it. We named it Beauty as it was delicious. This is what it looked like before we cooked it. After it was cooked, we blendered and bottled it and used it right away (in a sterilised tall bottle).
It is easy to share with you now as I recorded each version directly onto a new Google Slide, duplicating and changing the relevant details each time (well actually after scribbling on scrap paper with a vivid the changes and adding later).
Fry - 15 min
450g green chillies
1 onion
6 cloves garlic
1 t ground cumin
1 t coriander
1 T salt
3/4 cup olive oil
Boil - 10 min
½ cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups white vinegar
Boil hard - 1 min
¼ packet pectin
Sterilise the jars and lids in an oven 120C
Finely chop chillies, remove seeds as much as possible.
Mix together the first lot ingredients (chillies etc).
Transfer to a heavy based pan and fry for 15 minutes, stirring often to prevent sticking.
Add sugar and vinegar and bring to the boil.
Cover pan and boil for 10 minutes stirring occasionally. Then add ¼ packet pectin and boil max heat for 1 min
Cool down for 20 min, then blend
Pack into jars, then seal.
Nonnie's experimentations with chilli sauces, second good one - Spirited!
Lots of spices and kick!!! Looked much like Green Gavin. The turmeric is for health, also the garlic, onion, ginger, and cumin and coriander for taste. And apparently black pepper helps activate the health benefits of turmeric! Which needs to be cooked to be activated as well...
Fry - 15 min
3/4 cup olive oil
480g green chillies
1 large brown onion
8 cloves garlic
a few chunks ginger
1 T cumin seeds
1 T coriander (ground)
2 T turmeric (ground)
Black pepper, sprinkle over
3/4 T salt
Boil - 10 min
½ cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups white vinegar
Boil hard - 1 min
¼ packet pectin More detailed method - as above (Beauty recipe).
Last entry to come - hopefully regular Mexican green chilli sauce....the quest could be closer to its ending (the quest never truly ends as you never stop learning...)
green mexican chilli sauce (my version)
The traditional version had pork stock, and flour to thicken. Still searching for that amazing recipe I had at a restaurant - but this one I made was really good! Used pectin instead of flour to thicken.
--Fry - 15 min-- olive oil - cover pan 1 cm 370g green chillies (hot) 1 green capsicum 2 small brown onions 8 cloves garlic Ground cumin, sprinkle over Black pepper, himalayan rock salt, sprinkle over
--Boil - 10 min-- 3/4 cup sugar 3/4 cup white vinegar
--Boil hard - 1 min-- 1/2 packet pectin
Sterilise the jars and lids in an oven 120C.
Finely chop chillies, remove seeds as much as possible.
Mix together the first lot ingredients (chillies etc).
Transfer to a heavy based pan and fry for 15 minutes, stirring often to prevent sticking.
Add sugar and vinegar and bring to the boil. Cover pan and boil for 10 minutes stirring occasionally. Then add ¼ packet pectin and boil max heat for 1 min.
This is the best thing I ever made from my garden produce.
So simple to make, but the finest. You simply blender hot chillis, capsicums (peppers in North American) and vinegar. I found the recipe here at this great publication about chilli peppers and capsicums, "Peppers: Safe Methods to Store, Preserve, and Enjoy" (Content reviewed and revised by LINDA J. HARRIS, Food Safety and Applied Microbiology, Specialist, Department of Food Science and Technology, University of California, Davis.) Their recipes were adapted from “So Easy to Preserve,” 2nd Edition, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Georgia.
This is because I couldn't just try a recipe blindly. I was learning to live off the land, and preserve my garden produce - possibly for a long time, so I had to learn how to do it safely (and yummily!).
My favourite recipes in this publication was the "Pepper Jelly" (p.11), followed by "Hot Chilli Salsa" (p.8). But one of the reasons it tasted so amazing was the produce - fresh from my own garden, and using a variety of amazing heirloom and interesting tomatoes ranging from jam tomatoes, various coloured tomatoes, to different shapes of varieties.
Here is the recipe for Hot Chilli Pepper Jelly (sometimes called Red Pepper Jelly) but omitting a few drops of food colouring as I like completely natural foods. For the info I needed on preserving in general, go to the full scientific paper on preserving peppers, here. It is so easy! Just blender, and bottle. An amazing food with cheese, or on meats.
Hot Chilli Pepper Jelly
Makes 5 half-pint (250-ml) jars.
4 or 5 jalapeño or other hot peppers cored and chopped
4 medium green or red bell peppers cored and chopped
1 cup white vinegar (5%) or 250 ml
5 cups sugar or 1.25 L
1 pouch liquid pectin
1. Put half the peppers and half the vinegar into a blender; cover and process until
peppers are liquefied. Repeat with remaining peppers and vinegar.
2. Combine the pepper and vinegar mixture with the sugar in a large saucepan and
boil slowly for 10 minutes. Remove from heat.
3. Add liquid pectin and boil hard for 1 minute.
4. Skim foam off the top of the jelly and pour jelly immediately into canning jars, leaving 1⁄4 inch (0.5 cm) of headspace.
5. Wipe jar rims with a clean, damp cloth and secure lids and ring bands.
6. Process the jars of jelly in a boiling water bath as prescribed in Table 7.
Table 7. Recommended Processing Time for Pepper Jelly in a Water Bath Canner
hot plum/chilli chutneyShane's the flavour maestro. I am just the chemist.
Shane slowly stewed on the stove plums, sugar, hot chillies from the garden, garlic, and a few other things. Cinnamon? The sauce was awesome. Hot chillies and deep red plum jam - we had it with cheese and crackers, with meat - it was really fun.
I followed this "Cottage Smallholder" recipe for the most part (recipe reproduced on this post, below) - but added a 1/2 teaspoon of cloves on inspiration. I don't love it actually. What I learned from Shane here, with sauces and spicing - is that you have to taste it as you add the spices and chillies. Don't taste it at the end of the recipe like I did! By then I thought I had already added far too much spice, which was sucky.
Later.... March 11. It turns out Shane did love this chutney in the end - it just needed to age a bit. I had followed the recipe - and added the half teaspoon of ground cloves on inspiration. So intuition can be good too. So...
GREAT RECIPE + paying attention and tasting throughout = best results
mint/chilli relish
Shane also blended mint (which grows prolifically) with chillies and some vinegar to make a wicked relish.
cottage smallholder's hot spiced plum chutney from http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/hot-spiced-plum-chutney-recipe-6959 I had a yearning for a new plum chutney. Something fruity, spicy and hot. A chutney that could accompany roast pork, lamb or duck and be good with cheese sandwiches. A chutney that would inspire me to find infinite ways to use it.
We have a plum tree in our garden. It has large dark skinned plums. This year the harvest is enormous and during the recent high winds plums rained down on the driveway. Damaged windfall plums are perfect for making jam or chutney. I made a batch of our plum and tamarind chutney and then came up with this recipe. The lemon brings out the flavour of the plums and helps it to set.
It’s got a good chilli kick that comes a few seconds after the fruit bursts on your tongue. Wonderful and surprising. You can play with the amount of freah chilli used. Add them incrementally, letting the chutney absorb their flavour (about five minutes). I added the chopped dried chillies towards the end, a little at a time so as to get exactly the chilli sparkle that I wanted.
The chutney may look a bit sloppy when it’s ready to pot into jars. If you are unsure whether it has set enough, let a teaspoon get completely cold in the fridge – it thickens as it cools (about half an hour). If it is the right consistency for you, heat it the rest up very slowly and gently before pouring into warm sterilised jars with plastic lined lids.
If it’s too sloppy for your taste just bring it back to simmering point and continue string and testing every half an hour. Chutney is very forgiving – you can play with it a bit without ruining it. We always put a few jars away for vintage chutney – two year old chutney is to die for. Leave this chutney for at least a month to let the flavours to develop and mature.
INGREDIENTS
1.45 kilos approx of sweet plums500 ml of white wine vinegar (don’t use malt or white vinegar) 4 chunky cloves of garlic sliced fine 175g of dried apricots chopped 600g of white granulated sugar 1 lemon cut lengthwise into 8 slices and sliced very fine (ours weighed 100g) 1 large pinch of cayenne pepper 1 teaspoon of coriander powder 7 red birds eye chillis sliced fine, include the seeds 1 tsp of salt1 tsp of allspice powder 1 tsp cinnamon powder 1 tsp ground ginger 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar 5 juniper berries 10 black peppercorns 1 tsp of dried chillies, chopped fine with seeds
METHOD
The night before you want to make the chutney, put the plums in a large heavy bottomed saucepan/preserving pan and add the vinegar. Bring to the boil, cover and leave to cool until the next day.
Remove the stones from the softened plums. Return the plums and vinegar to the saucepan. Add all the ingredients apart from the sugar and the dried chillies.
Bring slowly to simmering point and add the sugar. Stir constantly until you are certain that the sugar has dissolved.
Bring the chutney back to a good simmer and, after an hour or so, add the dried chillis to taste. Stir every few minutes to stop the bottom burning (this is a labour of love after all).
Eventually depending on the strength of your simmer, the chutney will start to thicken (more like very thick soup than chutney) – mine took 3 hours, stirring every 10-15 minutes or so. Test for thickness by putting a spoonful in the fridge for half an hour and take the saucepan off the stove during the test.
When you have a consistency that you like, very gently reheat the chutney and when it reaches simmering point pour into warm sterilised jars and seal with plastic lined metal lids. Leave for a month to mellow.
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