Thai sweet chilli sauce

A little jar of this home-made condiment is now a staple in our household - it's quick and easy to make and rewards with flavours that are out of all proportion to the effort and cost involved. I add a splash to soups and sauces - especially salad dressing -  or to mayonnaise for a chicken sandwich filling, or use as a condiment or dipping sauce for spring rolls etc.
Seriously, you will never again be able to settle for a bottle of over-sweet gloopy orange goo from the supermarket shelf.
I buy galangal, lemongrass and frozen lime leaves in Chinatown but any Asian shop should have them and you can freeze what you don't use, for next time.
It is important to get the ginger, galangal and lemongrass pulped as finely as possible, because they can be quite fibrous and stalky.
You can double, triple or quadruple the recipe - it makes a great gift if you pretty up the jar with a nice label.

Ingredients

Sugar 300g
Water  75g
Coriander  (leaves and stalks)  50g
Garlic, peeled and roughly chopped 30g
Ginger roughly peeled and chopped 75g
Galangal roughly peeled and chopped 25g
Red chillies, tailed and roughly chopped 100g
Lemon grass, finely chopped (root end) 30g
Lime leaves (number)  4
Cider vinegar 100ml
Salt 25g
Soy sauce 50ml

Method
When you have prepped the veg as instructed, put them in a blender with the salt and half of the soy sauce and whizz to a fine pulp. Add more soy sauce if necessary.
Put the sugar and water in a big saucepan on a high heat, and stir until the sugar dissolves. Watch carefully as it comes to the boil, and wait until the sugar caramelises to a dark toffee / terracotta colour (it will be very hot and bubbling furiously so TAKE GREAT CARE).
Wearing a long oven glove(or wrap your arm in a tea towel!), pour in the cider vinegar. It will hiss and spit SO STAND BACK. Turn the heat off, add the chilli/ginger pulp and the rest of the soy sauce, and stir well to prevent lumps forming.
Allow to cool slightly before sealing in jars.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holiday kitchen confessional

So I am in the wilds of the northwest of Scotland this week, which I'm afraid is still a dire destination for a foodie ... yes there is lovely smoked salmon and the occasional kipper, but on the whole what is available to visitors (outside of chef-driven exclusive luxury lodges) is deep-fried stodge. The Scots are not unjustly famed for their oats porridge but they also invented the deep-fried Mars bar. From the window of our holiday cottage I can see Loch Sunart lazily lapping at the shore in the early evening sunshine - at this time of year it never truly gets dark and last thing before going to bed I look out on the silvery ribbon of water and hope to see an otter (I have done before, not yet on this trip). So we're back to basic self-catering holiday food: one-pot chicken casserole on our first night, which always pleases me in its deep chickenness. Plus, the first time David cooked it for me I knew I wanted to live with him forever. It's slow food but takes only minute
Read more

Rhubarb and almond tart

Image
I AM  a feasting kinda gal, excess draws me like a moth to a flame and there's nothing that excites me more than an 8-hour lunch that becomes supper (I call that lupper) and then goes on into the night as we open yet another bottle. My friend Andy, who is more English than I am, recognises it as a 'Leo' (Sayer = all-dayer in Cockney rhyming slang). It's a well-established ritual but one that happens less often as we get older, and not at all under current lockdown restrictions. Sigh.  Tasting menus excite me. They allow smidgins of lots of different foods but never trigger the synapse that controls the Off button.  I read menu like others novels. All the starters, please,  then divvy up the mains so we can all have a taste. Someone at the table will always say 'ooh, there's a chocolate thing on, I must save room for that' and I'll think boo, how dull, I'll have the CHEESE.  I am quite well known for desserts generally, have made and sold co
Read more

Kedgeree for days

Image
We're all cooking so much more these days and while for some of us that's a busman's holiday for others it's a tedious treadmill of getting meals on the table with all the associated planning, prep and cleaning up that entails.  We're all looking for inspiration and hungrily devouring recipe collections and suggestions, and enviously eyeing up instagram feeds from foodies who make everything look so delicious - we do, after all, eat with our eyes.  Here at Daffodil Soup HQ we've been making lots of comfort food, baking bread and delving in to kitchen classics, which led to one of the most comforting meals of Lockdown so far - the most serendipitously delicious example of kedgeree that it just had to be shared.  Originally a Bengal staple dish of spiced rice and lentils served with fried fish (Khicharhi), smoked fish and boiled eggs were added by Colonial cooks in the kitchens of the British empire to make it a favourite at the breakfast table
Read more