Sweet Chilli Sauce

Now that the garlic and shallots have been harvested and the first chillies are fruiting - only a month late thanks to the non-event which was spring 2013 - it's time to make a first batch of sweet chilli sauce.  The first up are the fatalii, hardly unexpected as the plant was over-wintered indoors and then put back outside in May.

This sauce isn't a long-term keeper, not that it would survive long in this household anyway, but one to eat fresh. 



Depending on the what the sauce is going to accompany I adjust the heat level, usually using serranos, jalapenos and sometimes yellow fatalii.  Stick to one type and appreciate the different flavours they each have.

4-6 red or yellow chillies  (green chillies taste fine, but make it look less stunning!)
10 cloves of garlic, peeled
4 shallots, peeled and roughly quartered
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
3 stalks lemon grass, tender centre only, roughly sliced
bunch of coriander, leaves and stems, roughly chopped (add the root, too, if you have it)
300g caster sugar
75ml cider vinegar
50ml Thai fish sauce
50ml light soy sauce

Put chillies, garlic, shallots, ginger, lemon grass and coriander in to a food processor and process to a rough paste.

Mix together the vinegar, fish sauce and soy.

Place the sugar in a saucepan with 4 tablespoons of water and heat slowly, stirring until the sugar has all dissolved.  Turn up the heat to high,  do not stir and leave to caramelise.  This takes about 7 minutes but can be quicker so do watch it closely.  If the browning is uneven, very, very gently swirl the pan.

When it is nice and deep nutty brown colour, stir in the paste.  It may spit hot caramel at you so be careful!
Return it to the boil which may only take a moment, and then add the vinegar, fish sauce and soy.  Return to the boil for a minute or two and then leave to cool.

Do not be tempted to taste the sauce until it has cooled as the sugar will be tongue-blisteringly hot.  As I know from painful experience.

Eat warm or cold.  Store any left overs in a lidded jar in the fridge.

Good with fishcakes, grilled meat, stir fried vegetables, rice or noodles, and as a base for other sauces. I even chucked some in an omelet with a load of tomatoes on Monday.  A very versatile sauce!

The lemon grass is also from the garden; it lives in a large pot and spends the summer out on the deck but joins us and a chilli plant, snuggled up around the log burner in the winter.

This morning I emptied the freezer of the remains of the bumper chilli harvest from last year and so will be making a vat of this sweet sauce.  It looks like there are lot of fatalii left, so it could be a rocket fuel batch!

A nice mix of fatalii, cayenne, serranos plus the bulbous red and green ones, which were grown from seeds saved from a Big Jim.  Who knows what the cross was, but it has made for a very nice fruit, just on the painful side for stuffing!

Any that hasn't been eaten in a week or so is going back in the freezer, if I can find room.