The Hot Sauce Cookbook (8 page)
Read The Hot Sauce Cookbook Online
Authors: Robb Walsh
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 scallions, white and green parts, trimmed and chopped
Leaves from 1 sprig fresh thyme
Juice of 3 small Mexican limes, about 3 tablespoons
1 habanero-type chile, stemmed, seeded, and minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
3 tablespoons dark rum
1 cup dried bread crumbs
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Working over a mixing bowl to catch as much juice as possible, twist off the crab claws, break them open, pick out the meat, and put in the bowl. Break off the apron (or key), then pull off the top shell, but keep it intact. Rub off the feather gills and break the body in two. Remove the crabmeat from the shells.
Add the garlic, scallions, thyme, lime juice, chile, parsley, rum, and bread crumbs to the crabmeat. Mix well, mashing the mixture into a paste. Stuff the crab shells with the mixture and place stuffing side up on a baking sheet. Bake the stuffed crab backs for 20 minutes. Serve warm with
Papaya Fire
or your favorite Caribbean hot sauce on the side.
BOSTON BEACH JERK RUB
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Makes 4 cups
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The barbecue technique handed down from the Arawak-Carib people is famously preserved in Boston Beach, Jamaica, on the island’s northwest coast. A metal grate has replaced the green sticks of the native Amerindians and corrugated zinc is more common than banana leaves as a covering; otherwise, the process looks a lot like the illustrations of the 1600s.
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Boston Beach is not really a town; it’s actually just a collection of “jerk shacks,” bars, and spice stores. The jerk men tout their respective specialties, including jerk chicken, jerk sausage, and jerk pork. They also shill their own special blends of jerk seasoning.
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There are several good commercial jerk seasonings available, including Walkerswood Traditional Jerk Seasoning and Jamaican Country Style Boston Dry Jerk Seasoning. But making your own jerk rub is easy and the flavor is far superior to anything you buy in a jar. Here’s the recipe.
½ cup fresh thyme leaves
2 bunches (about 15) scallions, white and green parts, trimmed and chopped
¼ cup finely diced peeled fresh ginger
3 habanero-type chiles, stemmed but not seeded
¼ cup peanut oil
5 garlic cloves, chopped
3 bay leaves
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon freshly ground coriander
2 teaspoons freshly ground allspice
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon freshly ground cinnamon
Juice of 1 lime
Combine all the ingredients in a food processor. Process to a thick, chunky paste. You can store the sauce in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator for several months.
JERK BARBECUE
Use a lot of jerk rub in proportion to the amount of meat—the jerk sauce will form a crust.
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In Boston Beach, they use the wood of the pimento (allspice) tree for barbecue. At home, use charcoal briquettes to start the fire, then add chunks of sweet hardwoods, such as apple, peach, maple, walnut, pecan, or hickory.
Jerked Chicken
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Serves 2 to 4
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1 (3-pound) chicken, split in half
1 to 1½ cups
Boston Beach Jerk Rub
On a cutting board, pack the wet jerk rub around both sides of the chicken halves and under the skin. Marinate in a sealed container in the refrigerator overnight.
About 1 hour before you are ready to grill, take the chicken out of the refrigerator and bring to room temperature. About 30 minutes before you are ready to grill, start the charcoal in a water smoker or covered grill. When the coals are covered with ash, spread out the coals and sear the chicken halves, turning to brown both sides. Set the chicken aside and place a drip pan in the grill, then surround the pan with the hot coals. Place the chicken directly over the drip pan to prevent flare-ups and cover the grill. After the meat begins sizzling, arrange the sweet wood around the coals (not on top) so the wood chunks smolder rather than burn. Keep the temperature between 250° and 275°F. Refuel with small amounts of charcoal and wood chunks as needed. Smoke the chicken for 1½ hours or until it reaches an internal temperature of 165°F; it should be crispy and well done, and the jerk rub should turn black and crusty.
Jerked Pork
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Serves 6
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1 (6-pound) bone-in pork shoulder (Boston butt)
2 to 3 cups
Boston Beach Jerk Rub
Place the pork roast skin-side down on a cutting board, and cut it at 1½ inch intervals to within 1 inch of the shoulder blade bone. Massage the jerk rub deeply into the roast. Cover and marinate the roast in the refrigerator overnight.
About 1 hour before you are ready to grill, take the meat out of the refrigerator and bring to room temperature. About 30 minutes before you are ready to grill, start the charcoal in a water smoker or covered grill.
When the coals are covered with ash, place a drip pan in the grill and surround the pan with the hot coals. Place the meat directly over the drip pan to prevent flare-ups and cover the grill. After the meat begins sizzling, arrange the sweet wood around the coals (not on top) so the wood chunks smolder rather than burn. Keep the temperature between 250° and 275°F. Refuel with small amounts of charcoal and wood chunks as needed. Smoke the meat for 4 to 6 hours or until the internal temperature is 180° to 195°F; it should be crispy and well done, and the jerk rub should turn black and crusty. Allow the meat to rest for at least ten minutes, then slice and serve with rice and peas, stewed greens, or your favorite barbecue accompaniments.
Jerked Red Snapper
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Serves 4
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1 (2½-pound) whole red snapper, gutted and cleaned
Rinse the fish, remove the scales, and cut off the fins. With a sharp knife, make vertical slashes about 1½ inches apart along each side of the fish. Bend the fish so that the slashes on one side open to expose the meat, and pack each opening with jerk rub. Repeat on the other side. Wrap the fish in plastic wrap and marinate in the refrigerator for several hours.
About 1 hour before you are ready to grill, take the fish out of the refrigerator and bring to room temperature. About 30 minutes before you are
ready to grill, start the charcoal in a water smoker or covered grill. When the coals are covered with ash, place a drip pan in the grill and surround the pan with the hot coals. Spread the fish’s rib cage open wide, and stand the fish upright on the grill, directly over the drip pan to prevent flare-ups. After the fish begins sizzling, arrange the sweet wood around the coals (not on top) so the wood chunks smolder rather than burn. Keep the temperature between 250° and 275°F. Refuel with small amounts of charcoal and wood chunks as needed. Cook the fish for 30 minutes or until done throughout. At the table, remove the meat and crispy skin from the bones and serve with grilled pineapple, rice and peas, or your favorite accompaniments.
Jerked Lobster
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Serves 4
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4 spiny (or rock) lobster, about 2 pounds each
2 cups
Boston Beach Jerk Rub
¾ cup softened unsalted butter
Split the shell of each spiny lobster down the middle of the underside. Stuff as much wet jerk rub as you can into the shell around the meat. Cover with plastic wrap. Marinate the lobsters for 4 hours in the 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
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Makes 1 (750 ml) bottle
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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Makes 1 pint
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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.
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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.
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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
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Makes about 6 cups
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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 farms because it kept indefinitely at room temperature and sold for three times the price of hard cider. White vinegar is a modern industrial product made in huge batches; it has little or no taste or aroma, but is often infused with other flavors and colors. Europeans used wine vinegar for the earliest pepper sauces in the Caribbean. Cane vinegar became common during the era of sugar cane plantations. It has a pleasant trace of residual sugar.
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If you are interested in experimenting, there are many options. Look for vinegar with 4 percent acetic acid (40-grain) when making sauces. Pickling vinegar should be between 40 and 50 (the USDA specifies 45 grains). Homemade vinegar is often below the 40-grain strength required for safe pickling, but it makes a wonderful barbecue sauce. If the vinegar you are using is higher than 40 grain, it should be diluted with water or other liquids until the acetic acid level equals 4 percent.