Tag: chilli

Chicken Piri Piri

First, make the piri piri sauce. Don’t buy Nando’s.

Next, take chicken- drumsticks, thighs, quarters – whatever you fancy, but skin on. The darker meat is nicer. Slash the meat and skin, and rub in a little of the piri piri sauce into the skin, and into the cuts. About 3 tablespoons of piri piri will do a whole chicken, cut up into portions.

The easiest way to do this is to put it all into a plastic food bag, and massage it through the plastic.

Let it all marinade for at least a couple of hours, then cook it all on a BBQ. If you must, cook it in an oven, but it’s not as good!

Piri Piri Sauce (aka Massa pimentao)

In Portugal, in every bar and restaurant you can get piri piri chicken, cooked on an open BBQ. It’s fantastic! On holiday I looked round for a Portugese recipe book to find out how to make piri piri. I found one, and it’s the coolest ingredient list ever:

Take:

1kg of red chilis (pimento traditionally, but a a mix of heats is nice)
1 cup of salt
1 clove of garlic

Rough chop the chillis into discs (keep the seeds in) and put the chillis into a stoneware pot. I suggest you wear some rubber gloves for this bit, because after chopping 1kg, you’re going to have chilli on your hands for a long time.

Mix the cup of salt into the chopped chillis. Put the lid on the pot, and leave it for 10-14 days. Every day take the lid off, stir the chillis and put the lid back. The chillis will go soft and shrivvled, and semi-disolved salt and juice will collect in the jug. The smell is immense!

After the 10 to 14 days take the contents of the pot and blend it to a fine paste, along with the clove of garlic.

Put the paste into jars, and cover with a layer of olive oil to store.When you want to use some of the sauce, take out a couple of spoons full, and make sure it’s covered with oil.

‘Smoke Bomb’ Chilli Sauce

This is a really nice smokey hot sauce, that’s good in stir-fries, in wraps or splashed round nachos for a little fiery hit! The smell is fantastic- it can catch your throat if you stir-fry with it though.

6 dried, smoked cipottle chillis,
6 dried habinaros chillis (the reaaallly hot one), use a lesser chilli for a milder
1/2 tsp salt
3 tsp sugar
cider or white wine vinegar to mix to the consistency you want.

You can make this into either a runny sauce, like tabasco, or something more ketchup like. the amount of vinegar you add will determine this.

To make it, allow the chillis to soak in some vinegar for a couple of days. Once ready, blitz all the ingredients together, and store in a clean glass jar.

Simples! Except watch out for contamination. Habinaros are very hot, and it’s difficult to wash off the heat from your hands- be warned contact lens wearers.

Pasta Salsa

The is a really quick pasta sauce that I discovered. A friend of mine makes a sauce for chicken like this- roasting the ingredients with the chicken in a hot oven. Anywho… frying it all up for a pan is quicker, and well, works a treat. It takes longer to cook the pasta than it does to prep and cook the sauce. the ingredients are a bit salsa-y, thus the name.

It works best if the cherry tomatoes are sweet and ripe. If they’re a bit sharp or hard, add a little extra sugar to compensate. You can make this with bigger tomatoes, but, well, it just ain’t the same. It also works quite well with a few olives thrown in for good measure.

Pasta- fuselli or similar
2 mugs cherry tomatoes
1/2 a chilli
1/2 clove garlic
1/2 tsp sugar
Pinch salt
Balsamic vinegar

Fry the chilli & garlic
Add 1/4-ed tomatoes + sugar
Put on lid & fry for 2 mins
Add vinegar
Fry & reduce (really hot heat, 2 mins tops)
Salt & black pepper to taste