The hottest peppers: also known as scotch bonnets / habanerosIf you have family from another country, I'm sure you know that whoever is making a visiting trip is automatically designated to bring back specific goodies from whichever country your family calls "home". This person is expected to schlep back with anything from special brands of toothpaste, your great-aunt's famous fried fish, cases of rum, etc., even at the risk of being accosted by customs, lol.
Pepper sauce in Panama is very similar to other hot sauces popular throughout the Caribbean and West Indies. It consists mostly of spicy peppers called aji chombo (similar to the habanero or scotch bonnet pepper), onion, garlic, some sort of acid, and various spices and herbs.
A simple and unassuming reddish-gold sauce bottled in reused glass jars, but prized as if it were liquid gold. As a kid, I never understood why we always had to wait until someone came back from Panama to get a new batch...but now I realize that it was more about nostalgia and having a piece of home for many of my family members. Plus, there was usually a relative or friend in Panama that had a knack for making a great pepper sauce :o).
In many Panamanian households, homemade pepper sauce is a pantry staple, and everyone has their own version. The condiment is as essential as ketchup is here in the States, and I definitely have some family members who use the stuff like ketchup!
I love hot pepper, but my taste buds are definitely not as hardcore, so I can only take the tiniest bit at a time, lol. For the most part I like to use the sauce in marinades, stir it into stews, add a few drops to a pot of rice, etc...
And believe me...a little goes a loooong way. Habaneros / scotch bonnets are no joke!
For the past 3 years I've been making my own sauce and it's become a comforting new tradition for me to start a new jar every summer.
Each year's batch is unique because I use a mix of scotch bonnets and various other hot peppers.
In the past, I would add peppers purchased from a nearby historic house's garden market. I really loved the idea of using random local ingredients, but this year I had to be a little less romantic about things since the house's market closed down. I guess the yield was too small for the city to justify doing it anymore. :(
So this time I mixed things up by using a few jalapenos.
If you're a chili head and Tabasco sauce just isn't cutting it for you any more...give this simple version of Panamanian hot sauce a try! And if you're up to it, go for a more traditional taste and just use red scotch bonnet peppers (about 13-15) instead of a mix...
Panamanian Style Pepper Sauce
makes around 1 1/2 cups
9 scotch bonnet peppers
5 jalapenos
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tablespoons dijon or brown mustard
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
Juice of half of a lemon or lime
pinch of sugar
***Warning: habaneros / scotch bonnets / aji chombo are the hottest peppers in the world! Please use gloves when cutting them...you really don't want to get the oils on your hands or in sensitive areas like your eyes***
Coarsely chop the peppers, onions and garlic and add to your blender or food processor. Pulse the mixture until finely chopped, then add the mustard. Process until smooth.
Pour in the lemon juice, vinegar, and salt and process once again.
Lastly, sprinkle in a pinch of sugar and blend once more.
Transfer the sauce into a clean glass jar (at least 1- pint capacity).
The pepper sauce will be a little chunky, but if you'd like a slightly milder & smoother sauce, take a moment to cut out the ribs and seeds of the peppers before blending.
Store in the refrigerator and use as needed. For a marinade or a large pot of soup or stew, start with one teaspoon to perk up the dish. Experiment and see how much heat works for you. :o)
Enjoy!
4 comments:
Girl! LoL . .. I know about commissioning folks to bring food back. Whenever someone was going to Nigeria, you always wanted them to bring back some authentic bitterleaf for bitterleaf soup, some fresh egusi (melon seeds) for egusi soup, some dried crawfish which accented soups so well and some bottles of red palm oil. I remember how my mom used to be so careful with how she used the home-grown ingredients because you just never knew when someone else would be going home.
The hot pepper sauce looks on point! Beautiful as usual!!
Forgot to say I'm going to try this recipe. I'm trying to incorporate more raw foods into the diet and I am thinking of some dishes that this would really liven up. :)
Thanks Chi-Chi! It should be a great addition to the raw meals, and you can always thin it out with more vinegar if you like a thinner sauce :o)
Speaking of Egusi soup, I have yet to try that, it sounds delicious though! I've seen quite a few photos of it in the NYAM flickr group...
Girl, this is some good stuff! Ive got to maintain some chile in the bloodstream and like you said, tabasco just wasnt cuttin it...
Anyway, I roasted the habaneros and a couple of the garlic cloves for about 15 min in the oven to release the flavor. I left the other ingredients raw. This made the taste really complex, but I think it also cut some of the immediate intensity of the habaneros. Now its a slow steady burn, not an in your face burn.
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