The Hot Sauce Cookbook by Robb Walsh Read Free Book Online Page B

refrigerator.
    Just before broiling the lobsters, stuff 3 tablespoons of butter into each shell. Broil the lobster on the lower rack of the oven until the meat is white, about 10 minutes.

PEPPER SHERRY
    ——— Makes 1 (750 ml) bottle ———
    The Amerindians cooked with fresh peppers. But the Europeans needed to find a way to preserve the peppers to take them back to the continent. The first and easiest method they came up with was to put the peppers in wine and use the seasoned wine as a sauce. Columbus carried sherry on his earliest voyages, while Portuguese ships were stocked with the fortified port called Madeira.    +   Pepper sherry is still a tradition in Bermuda where fine pepper sherries like Outerbridge’s Original Sherry Pepper Sauce are aged in oak barrels with a touch of spices. Busha Browne’s Spicy & Hot Pepper Sherry from Jamaica is also very popular.    +   Making pepper sherry is ridiculously easy: you just drop hot peppers into a sherry bottle. Chile pequíns are usually used, because they fit easily into the mouth of the bottle. Many West Indians use immature pepper buds.    +   I use inexpensive sherry, but if you want to make pepper sherry from a Manzanilla or Amontillado, I am sure it will taste great.
    1 (750 ml) bottle sherry (your choice of dry or sweet)
    50 chile pequíns or any hot chile that fits in the mouth of the bottle
    Pour yourself a glass of sherry and drink it (this makes enough room in the bottle for the peppers). Pierce each chile with the point of a knife to allow the liquid to penetrate it, then add the chiles to the sherry. Allow the pepper sherry to age for a week or two before using it, and remember not to accidentally pour a glass for your grandmother.

PEPPER VINEGAR (PIQUE)
    ——— Makes 1 pint ———
    In Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, pique is what they call a bottle of peppers steeped in vinegar. “Sport peppers” is the name for the bottle of peppers and vinegar you find on your table at restaurants in Louisiana. You sprinkle the pepper-laced vinegar on your food. After the vinegar is used up, the bottle is topped off with more vinegar.    +   In a restaurant in Jamaica, I found Scotch bonnets with carrots, onions, and spices in vinegar in a glass pancake-syrup dispenser with a plastic top. This ingenious arrangement allows you to take some peppers and hot vegetables out of the bottle so you to mash them in your stew or soup. You can get the same result by filling a pancake syrup dispenser with Escabeche along with enough of the pickling liquid to keep the peppers and vegetables submerged.    +   You can make pique in any bottle, big or small. Just increase or decrease the proportions to fit the bottle.
    5 habanero-type chiles
    1 carrot, peeled and chopped
    1 small onion, chopped
    4 garlic cloves, peeled
    1 (1-inch) cube peeled fresh ginger
    1 thyme sprig
    1¾ cups cane, cider, or white wine vinegar
    1 teaspoon rum
    Make a small slit in each chile with the point of a knife to allow the liquid to penetrate it quickly. Stuff the chiles, carrot, onion, garlic, ginger, and thyme into a pint-size syrup dispenser. Add the vinegar and rum and wait a week for the flavor to develop, or you can hurry things up by heating the vinegar first. If you use hot vinegar, the pique will be ready in a few hours.
    When you use all the vinegar, just add more. Again, heating the vinegar when you refill the bottle speeds the process. One bottle of peppers is good for three or four batches of pique.

VINEGAR BARBECUE SAUCE
    ——— Makes about 6 cups ———
    English accounts of pig roasts in Jamaica from the 1600s describe the barbecue sauce as a mixture of vinegar and peppers. This sounds very close to the vinegar-based barbecue sauce of eastern North Carolina. Modern Carolina barbecue joints use distilled white vinegar or cider vinegar to make their barbecue sauces. Apple cider vinegar, with its tart apple aroma, was an important product on early American