Third Time's A Hot Charm
(Recipes • Food)
The kids are off from school, it’s really impossible to work, yet we still have garden leftovers that need attention else they go bad, and you can’t have that. Which is why this blog has resembled a cookbook lately.
Today I found eight good Jamaican Hot Chocolate habanero peppers waiting patiently in the fridge, along with various odds and ends that appeared promising from a hot sauce point of view.
This was the third (and smallest) batch of habanero sauce I’ve made this season. The last one just went out the door as little Christmas presents, but next year this is the recipe I’ll be using, providing I’m lucky enough to enjoy a habanero harvest in the summer. 
Adapted from a recipe for “Spicy Island Hot Sauce,” this version comes as close as I’ve managed in achieving the major goals I’ve set for such a substance. First and foremost, it allows the JHC habanero’s musky flavor to shine through without searing the tongue, while nonetheless not sacrificing the satisfying heat of the pepper. The heat and chile flavor is pure habanero, as no other peppers are included, unlike many recipes. This also is a complex, sweet and fruity sauce that should work well in marinades, tacos and on pork, chicken and fish.
Granted, I used a pint jar of persimmon jam I made a few weeks ago, and hardly anyone’s going to have that on hand. But you could substitute a like amount of chopped mango, papaya, peaches, apricots or pineapple with good results, I bet. Each would lend its own character to the total.
(But hey – let’s be careful out there – don’t work with habanero peppers without donning kitchen gloves first. Also, turn the oven ventilation on if you have it. Respect the chiles or expect to suffer extremely painful consequences.)
Tropical Bob’s Habanero Sauce
Ingredients:
→ 8 habanero peppers, most seeds and membranes removed, chopped coarsely
→ 1 medium onion, chopped coarsely
→ 2 large garlic cloves, chopped
→ 1 medium tomato, peeled
→ 1 large stalk celery, strings removed as much as practical, chopped coarsely
→ 3 tablespoons fresh ginger, chopped
→ 2 tablespoons fresh thyme
→ 1 pint persimmon jam (or substitute fruit as mentioned above)
→ (only if not using the jam) 2 tablespoons honey
→ 1/3 cup good dark rum
→ 2/3 cup of lime juice (about 4 limes)
→ 1 teaspoon kosher salt
→ 1/4 teaspoon cardamom
Method:
→ Bathe some half-pint canning jars and lids in hot tap water in separate pans
→ Carefully load all sauce ingredients into a blender. Start on a slower speed and work up to medium high, for a total of about a minute until the mixture is smooth but before it starts frothing.
→ Pour the mixture into a large sauce pan and, over medium-high heat, bring to a boil. Stir, lower heat and gently simmer for 10 minutes. Cover pan, remove from heat and allow to cool for about 20 minutes.
→ Remove jars from large pot, add more hot water and boil. Use a funnel to pour sauce into canning jars. Tighten lids. Boil them in the large pot for 30 minutes.
This batch yielded 4 cups (8 half-pint jars), plus a big shot glass full – enough for tasting and concluding that this stuff will be even better once it’s aged in the jars for a few days.
→ B.Dunn, Dec 27, 2009, 01 28 pm
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Gulf Coast Holiday Dip
(Recipes • Food)
Rich, zippy and makes you say “oh, yeah,” this is a modification based on a recipe from one Lynda Kay. Use fresh shrimp for best results. If you make it this time of year, you’ll have to get your crawfish frozen.
Ingredients:
→ 1 pound fresh gulf shrimp
→ A half-cup of good crab boil such as Old Bay or Zatarain’s
→ 1 pound peeled, frozen crawfish tails
→ 1 pint heavy cream
→ A heaping half-cup of good Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, shredded
→ 6 tablespoons butter
→ A generous quarter-cup flour
→ salt and white pepper to taste
→ 12-16 good dashes of your favorite Tabasco-style hot sauce
Method:
→ Thaw the crawfish. Peel the shrimp. Put a big pot on to boil and stir in the crab boil; bring to a rolling boil. Add the shrimp to the pot and boil them for two minutes. Turn off the fire and let them soak a couple minutes more to absorb the seasoning.
→ Put the boiled shrimp in a food processer and grind them up coarsely.
→ Melt the butter in a large heavy-bottom pan. Sprinkle in the flour and stir for about five minutes over medium-low heat until the roux is smooth and begins to brown. Add the cream a little at a time and keep stirring for another five minutes until the sauce is smooth and thickened. Lower the heat a little.
→ Stir in the shrimp and add the crawfish. Add the cheese and stir until it’s melted and mixed well.
→ Season with the salt and pepper. Add the hot sauce and mix well again.
Serve warm with bagel chips. Makes somewhere in the neighborhood of a half-gallon; probably won’t last real long.
→ B.Dunn, Dec 24, 2009, 01 21 pm
When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Breakfast Tacos
(Recipes • Food)
This is one of those things you can do with a lot of morning visitors and the last remains of a fall garden. Tortillas stretch the ingredients so far it almost seems like Jesus and the loaves. But we aren’t talking about fish tacos here.
Especial de huevos, papas y tocino tacos:
Ingredients
→ 12-16 taco-size flour tortillas
→ 4-6 medium potatoes
→ 1 small onion, chopped
→ 2 medium green tomatoes, chopped and diced
→ 1-2 large green chile peppers
→ 4 thick slices of bacon
→ A generous cup of jack cheese, shredded
→ 2-3 tablespoons fresh chopped Mexican oregano (you could click the photo)
→ 6 eggs
→ Fresh Salsa
Method
→ Scrub but don’t peel the potatoes. Put them in a large pan, cover with hot water and boil for about 20 minutes.
→ Heat the oven to its lowest setting, stack tortillas on a plate, separated with small pieces of wax paper, and covered with a larger piece. Put them in the oven to warm.
→ Fry the bacon in a large frying pan until the fat is rendered and it’s fairly crisp. Set aside folded inside paper towels.
→ Saute onion and green tomatoes in bacon grease until soft.
→ Remove potatoes from water, slice and dice, add to frying pan. Cover but stir vegetables occasionally until potatoes have softened. Season with the oregano, salt and pepper.
→ While potatoes are cooking, scramble the eggs with a little milk or cream. Cover with the cheese when the eggs are done. Turn off the burner and cover with pan lid to melt the cheese. Crumble the bacon
→ Assemble the tacos by rolling up the ingredients in warm tortillas: cheesy eggs first, then bacon pieces, potatoes and salsa. (Your favorite hot sauce is a fine substitute for the salsa.)
Serves 6-10 depending on how hungry they are.
→ B.Dunn, Dec 22, 2009, 09 05 am
Let Them Eat Ammonia
(Food • Government)
As if you needed more evidence that the Food and Drug Administration is, to put it kindly, run almost by accident, there’s this:
Starting in spring 2011, sales of fresh, live oysters from Texas, Louisiana and Florida will be prohibited from May to October unless they are processed after harvest, an FDA official told the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference last week.According to FDA data, Vibrio vulnificus infections cause an average of 30 illnesses each year in the United States, from which 15 people die…Vibrio deaths usually occur among people with underlying chronic conditions such as AIDS, cancer, kidney disease, diabetes and alcohol abuse.
Get it? This is an emergency of such immense proportions that the ban on spring and summer oysters is being put in place in two years. And once it’s in place, it could result in the saving of up to 15 lives (12 of whom likely will go on to expire of other causes within weeks).
Yeah, sure, the entire city of Apalachicola, Fla. (which harvests some fine oysters by the way) and a couple hundred people associated with the Galveston Bay oyster industry will lose their jobs, but probably fewer than 15 of them will die of starvation.
Meanwhile (and here’s the fun part), E. coli, mostly the 0157:H7 variety, and much of the time coursing its way through improperly processed hamburger, hospitalizes at least 2,000 Americans each year, kills 60 of them and permanently maims others.
Yet government food inspection agencies aren’t threatening to ban the sale of hamburger until Cargill and the nation’s other giant meat-processors stop including floor sweepings and ammonia in their “Angus Beef Patties.”
So, guess who has the biggest bank account: the American beef lobby or the Apalachicola oyster fleet owners?
→ B.Dunn, Oct 28, 2009, 07 10 am
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