Turbo-1's HOT STUFF

Math Jeans

Ok. I have officially finished the habanero relish. I'll be sampling it with lunch tomorrow. I think I did it right (although I got the number wrong and accadentally started putting in double habaneros, but caught myself at the end. However, I still put in more habaneros than recommended). I havn't tasted it yet, but I believe that it is spicy as it has a REALLY strong smell. It was going throughout the house. My brother walked into the kitchen and asked me if I was trying to kill him . I'm looking forward to having some tomorrow.

turbo

I've been blathering on about making salsas, etc, so here is a snapshot of my little postage-stamp-sized kitchen. In the SS stock pot to the left is a batch of my home-made pizza sauce simmering down. It takes all day to thicken properly. The stock pot is sitting atop a perforated aluminum pizza dish to spread the heat more evenly, so the sauce doesn't scorch (took me a couple of years to figure that one out). The next pan to the right is the one I used to scald the tomatoes so the skin comes off easily, then they go into the sink to cool, and lastly into the remaining pot after I skin them and cut out any bad spots. That pot is full of tomatoes and just found its way onto a burner. I will simmer that and reduce the tomatoes by at least 1/2 before adding garlic, onions, green peppers, chilies, herbs, etc for yet another version of red tomato salsa. We've got lots of green tomatoes, still, so a batch of green tomato salsa is probably in the cards for this weekend. In the back is a white plastic bucket full of stems, skins, bad spots that I cut out, etc, and that's headed for the compost bins. Our last house had a big kitchen with tons of counter space, but I'll take these cramped quarters any day for the opportunity to garden, make up pickles and sauces, and process and freeze produce. With so little space, you just have to plan a bit.

turbo

Here's the fixings for today's batch of habanero relish. About 140 peppers, at least 6 (I lost count) large bulbs of fresh Russian garlic, and the chopped florets of about 10 heads of dill. This bears repeating - it you can find blossoming dill heads for sale, GET THEM! The flowers are so much more rich and pungent than the seeded heads or the weed (leaves). They are wonderful in salsas, pickles, etc, and can really kick up the taste of a fresh garden salad. The relish is simmering down (it will be a tiny batch due to the reduction in volume) and I just tasted some (maybe 1/10th of a teaspoon) and immediately my scalp broke into a sweat. Due to my normal disdain for safety procedures during the handling of habaneros, my hands are experiencing a mild burn, and even after washing my hands, I absent-mindedly scratched the side of my nose in response to an itch. It doesn't itch anymore

I just jarred up the relish, and got only 8 8-oz jars, 4 of which will go to my neighbor in repayment for setting us up with Russian and German garlic to sow this winter. He has ratcheted back his garlic consumption and restricted his gifts of garlic to others to make sure that we have enough to start our own crop, and that's a pretty big sacrifice. Suddenly, next summer's chili crop is looking too far away, and the habanero relish stores are looking meager. If the frost holds off for another week or so, I may be able to can another batch, though I expect I'll have to settle for green chilis - they don't ripen very well with these cold nights.

turbo

I just had a pan-fried Applegate Farms organic hot dog on a grilled roll with sauted onions, habanero relish, and yellow mustard. Mmmmmmmmm! How many more months until I can grow more chilies?

turbo

I was busy all day, and didn't cook, and my wife got home late from visiting our newest grand-niece in the hospital. As a result, we didn't have a planned meal and I had some more Applegate Farms hot dogs with rolls with sauted onions and habanero relish. I put about 1/2 tsp of the fresh home-made relish in each roll. Before I finished the first 'dog, my scalp was sweating - by the second, sweat was beading up all over my scalp, and by the third, my hair was plastered down and the back of my neck was wet with running sweat. The flavor is killer, and combined with Annie's Naturals organic yellow mustard and some sauteed yellow onions, these dogs couldn't have been better. I love the heat!!

turbo

The cold days and nights showed down the growth of my habaneros and they are no longer ripening, so I decided to pick all of them and make green habanero relish. I got some more fresh Russian garlic from my neighbor yesterday so I am stocked up again. Here is a shot of the basket from the garden with habanero peppers and fresh flowering dill heads, showing the proportions of chilis to dill to garlic that I decided to use - every batch is different, depending on my mood.
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x...o-1/basket.jpg

First I de-stemmed the chilis and then rinsed them of any dirt, pollen, etc that might have come in on them.
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x.../rinsehabs.jpg

while the peppers were draining in the sink, I turned my attention to the other raw ingredients - garlic and dill.
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x...lbsanddill.jpg

Since the garlic still has dried dirt on the outer skins, I took off the outer skins first and separated the cloves, and washed off my workspace. This looks like a lot of garlic, but I really should have used more. To peel garlic really quickly, lay a clove on either of it's flattest sides, take a sharp knife and slice off a thin bit of the root end of the clove, and when you get through the meat of the clove, do not continue to slice. Instead, turn your blade horizontally and trap the hard skin against your cutting board and roll the clove up and away from the knife. This usually takes off a big piece of skin and loosens other areas so you can quickly pull it off. You notice that I use thin flexible cutting board. These are great, and they don't develop deep grooves like the thick soft poly boards. When you've got stuff chopped up, just roll up the edges of the board and dump them into the pot.
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x...lingcloves.jpg

Once I had the cloves of garlic peeled, I turned to the dill. You don't have to add dill, but I like the flavor and we still have a lot of it in the garden, so in it goes. You can use dill weed (leaves of the plant) or seeded heads, but if you can get flowering dill heads, by all means, do so. The yellow florets are the richest-tasting parts of the plant. Here I show how much of the heads you use. I illustrate this with a knife, but I don't strip of the florets with a knife. It's a lot faster pinching them off between my thumbnail and index finger.
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x...illflorets.jpg

Here is the prepped food ready to be processed.
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x...vegetables.jpg

I use a small food processor. It makes quick work of the chopping, and if you're careful, you can limit your contact with habanero juice. The garlic and chilies can be chopped in any order. I showed a few of each because it looked good.
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x...notchopped.jpg

Here's a shot of some chopped ingredients. Notice the spatula. You do not want to be tempted to scrape out the sides of the processor bowl with your fingers.
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x...-1/chopped.jpg

Here are the processed vegetables in the pot, joined by the dill flowers.
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x...1/inthepot.jpg

NOTE: Here is the recipe. It's all you need to know, and it is so simple you can't screw it up even if you claim to be a terrible cook.

Get out a measuring cup and a big jug of cider vinegar. Keeping count, add vinegar cup by cup until the vinegar gets about to the top of the chopped ingredients. When the liquid level is right, add one teaspoon of non-iodized canning salt, one teaspoon of cane sugar and two tablespoons of molasses per cup of vinegar. I needed exactly 4 cups of vinegar for this batch.

Because of the opportunity for misinterpretation, and because I don't want to be liable for someone else's mistakes, I won't describe the process by which I canned the chili relish. You can buy a book from Ball, Kerr, or any other company that produces the jars, lids, and accessories, and they will clue you in about pH levels, safe processing times and temperatures, etc. Rest assured, the relish was transferred to sterile jars, topped with sterile lids, and processed in a boiling-water bath for 20 minutes. The batch you saw here yielded 13 half-pint jars.
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x.../inthejars.jpg

There you have it. A recipe that you can make at home with store-bought ingredients if you don't have a garden, and the ingredients for the liquid can be naturally scaled to any size batch. If you do 10 habaneros, for instance, you will probably need only 1/2 cup of vinegar, so 1/2 tsp of salt and sugar and one tbsp of molasses. Could it be any easier?

turbo

You can hit 'em both at the same time. My wife likes to make sweet jellies out of jalapeno and habanero peppers. They're great with cheese and crackers, with smoked oysters, sardines, slices of hot sausage, etc.

wolram

I will pay £500 for one weeks board and food.

Astronuc

A recent gift



Interestingly it's made in Kansas City. The bottle is in the shape of a hip flask.


www.originaljuan.com

Math Jeans

That is the coolest name for hot sauce that I have EVER seen.

turbo

You've got something better coming, buddy. Hang on and adopt a cautious attitude. The habanero relish made from store-bought chilies was a bit tame.

Astronuc

Pain 100% is pretty good, but mild by my standards.

turbo

Check the mail in a couple of days, Astronuc. You've got a jar of real habanero relish coming your way. It is made out of 95% bush-ripened habaneros and about 5% Russian garlic. The habanero relish you had during your visit was a "last-ditch" batch made after we ran out of the stuff made from garden-raised chilies, and I had to resort to using wimpy store-bought chilies. The stuff on the way is the best of the best - it's killer on hot dogs with yellow mustard.

Math Jeans

I know. Thats why I got a habanero plant. I'm using peppers from that now. (basically its for practice before I plant my other peppers).

The relish is also good in tacos :D

turbo

You'll find lots of uses for that, MJ. I use it as a primary source of heat in my home-made pizza sauce. I also use black pepper, cayenne, crushed red pepper - every source of heat I can get my hands on. When you use a variety of hot stuff, it plays out in a complex burn that can be fantastic, so mix it up when you decide to cook with this stuff.

Try making your own pizza sauce! If you don't have fresh tomatoes, you can used canned tomatoes. Dump a can of them in a blender, add some olive oil (it helps suppress foaming while you simmer the sauce), habanero relish, crushed red pepper, black pepper, a little sugar, and some basil, oregano, and maybe tobasco or other hot stuff, and blend it very thoroughly at high speed. The reason for this is to break up the cells of the tomatoes so they will de-water easily without scorching on the pan. Simmer this stuff very slowly until it reaches the desired consistency. I don't measure stuff when I make my pizza sauce, so do what I do and just go by feel. Even your first attempt will be better than the stuff you can buy in a store, and by your 2nd or 3rd batch, you'll never want to eat commercially-made pizza again. I make my pizzas on flour tortillas instead of crusts, and they are great. One tip: When your pizza is assembled and topped with parmesan cheese and vegetables, meat, etc, shake on a bit more oregano and freshly-ground black pepper, and grate a bit of Romano cheese over the pizza. Your friends and family will be begging you to make pizza.

Math Is Hard

You should start a "salsa of the month club" business, turbo. Since you don't want to go into mass production, I think you should charge insane amounts of money for subscriptions for strangers, but a reasonable price to your friends.

Heck, have you seen what people will pay for caviar? http://www.mastercaviar.com/caviar/c...FSUYagodtkXDew
I think you are sitting on a gold mine. Charge those rich snobs $100/ounce.

turbo

My problem is that even though I make lots of salsas and chili relishes, I also EAT a lot of salsas and chili relishes. I ran out of habanero relish in the spring, and had to make more from store-bought chilies. Blah! Hopefully, I managed to make enough this year to hold me over until the next harvest. I'd have to devote my entire 1500+ sq ft garden to chilies and tomatoes in order to be able to sell salsas, so that's out. I've sent a few jars of stuff to Astronuc, but I can't do much more than that (much as I'd love to) because I'm also supplying salsa to a neighbor who had been giving us Russian and German garlic - both to cook with and to use as planting stock. He has agreed that next year he will use his little greenhouse and containers to supplement my garden-grown habaneros with container-grown habaneros and hopefully allow us to avoid a crunch in next year's crop. He'll grow extra chilies and I will process them into salsas for both of us.

I'd love to be able to go commercial, but the best I can do at this point is to post simple recipes and get adventurous PFer's like Math Jeans to try them out and make their own salsas and relishes. I think he's hooked! I know that I'd have to charge $$$ to part with my salsas at this point, because I'm so bummed when I run out. We had to ration green-tomato salsa (my favorite for cheeseburgers) so that there would be a jar available when Astronuc and family visited. I made sure to make a lot more this year, so that (hopefully) won't happen again. You simply can't buy stuff this good anywhere.

Maybe I can start a chili-head self-help group... Try this recipe, MIH.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showpos...&postcount=867

You can adapt this recipe to any type of chili. Jalapeno relish is pretty tasty, but mild. Super chilies and tobasco chilies are hotter, with a nice flavor. Habanero chilies are much hotter, with a delayed burn that will make your scalp sweat. Dill seems to scale back the initial burn, for some reason, but the delayed burn of the habaneros comes through loud and clear. You can use a food processor to make up small batches of chili relish and scale the vinegar, sugar, salt, and molasses to any size batch. This recipe is so easy and so tasty that every PFer who loves hot stuff should take the time to make a little batch and toss it in the fridge.