Well, as the song says “the weather outside is frightful” (rain and wind) but indoors we are revelling in a warm fuzzy feeling brought on by produce from the limery and the generosity of friends.
Part of the chilli harvest
Despite the relatively late completion of the limery in the summer, it has still provided us with an abundance of food, not to mention being a lovely place to sit and a great place to be messy with water! We’ve had a decent number of tomatoes, plenty of sweet peppers and some courgettes (still producing slowly), but the biggest success has been the chillies. Admittedly this is because I went mad and sowed far too many seeds, but even so, it bodes well for production next year. The heat in the chillies is variable – currently the Bartlett’s bonnets are the mildest, which has come as rather a surprise – and so making curry or our our much-loved red-hot cauliflower has been a bit hit-and-miss. With this in mind I decided to have a bash at making chilli sauce to use as a condiment with a guaranteed level of heat. I trawled the internet for inspiration, found a recipe I liked the sound of and proceeded to modify it beyond recognition! This is what I ended up with:
Sweet apple chilli sauce
100g chillies, chopped (I used 5 lemon drop, 2 Barlett’s bonnet and 18 pyramid)
200g caster sugar
200g Demerara sugar
3 cloves garlic chopped
15g fresh ginger chopped
200g roast tomato passata
400g stewed apple (unsweetened)
160ml cider vinegar
1tsp salt
Put all the ingredients in a pan and simmer for 30 minutes. Allow to cool and then liquidise.
All in one pot
With my chillies, this produced about 1 litre of very hot , very sweet sauce. It provided a great accompaniment to smoked mackerel fishcakes last night and I think it could easily be used as an ingredient in a curry… you wouldn’t need much!
Ready to eat
The Snail of Happiness 
katechiconi
/ November 8, 2015I can’t let the Husband see this! Otherwise there’d be at least a litre of it in the fridge by this time tomorrow…
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The Snail of Happiness
/ November 8, 2015It’s so easy and I think you could substitute and fruit for the apple… I was going to have a go at your recipe for chilli jaw but then realised that I would need to go shopping for pectin, so this one came from things I had in the kitchen already. Having said that, it’s barely made a dent in the chilli harvest so I may be exploring your recipe soon!
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katechiconi
/ November 8, 2015It’ll be mango season soon… Now THAT would be sensational!
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inc
/ November 8, 2015As a lover of spicy chow, this looks delish!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ November 8, 2015In that case, you’d love it!
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narf77
/ November 8, 2015Excellent share Ms Snail. I have the apples, now I just need to source the chillies. I might have to cheat and use dried chilli flakes (but not 100g or it would be hotter than the surface of the sun! 😉 )
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The Snail of Happiness
/ November 8, 2015I think it would work fine with dried chillies… perhaps just 25g though!
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narf77
/ November 8, 2015I am with you on that. I love heat but the end result of 100g of dried hot chilli flakes might just take the roof off Serendipity Farm 😉
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The Snail of Happiness
/ November 8, 2015Best not to contribute that much to global warming!!
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thecontentedcrafter
/ November 8, 2015Wonderful first results from the Limery don’t you think! Yum!!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ November 8, 2015Yes, indeed… and I’m hoping for salad all winter too!
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arlingwoman
/ November 8, 2015Wow. I wish I could give you my hot peppers. I’m thinking of pickling them when I pickle the green tomatoes. Your stuff looks yummy.
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writinghouse
/ November 9, 2015I’ll stick a bit of sauce here between the doofers for you all to taste – { } – see? Completely yummy! On an unrelated note, how do you get chilli sauce off a monitor??
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The Snail of Happiness
/ November 9, 2015Sticky-stuff remover
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writinghouse
/ November 9, 2015What gets sticky-stuff remover off the screen then?
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The Snail of Happiness
/ November 9, 2015your sweetie
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writinghouse
/ November 10, 2015Yay!
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Claire
/ December 17, 2015making this chili apple sauce right now 🙂
thanks for the idea and recipe
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The Snail of Happiness
/ December 18, 2015Hope you enjoy it 🙂 My second batch is very hot!
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