JGE 13 - Part IV - Scotch Bonnet Chili Relish

Good Day,


And on a day that I am not allowed to eat anything but clear liquid and the ever filling Jello, I decided to spend some time in my kitchen in preparation of my fantastic voyage. I am sure that my experimentation with my extra Scotch Bonnets will keep my mind more preoccupied than my appetite.

This time I decided that I wanted to make a sort of Scotch Bonnet Relish, maybe a hybrid Chow Chow.  So my ingredients are: obviously Scotch Bonnet Peppers, garlic, Roma tomatoes, onions, shallots, limes, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, salt, vinegar, and oil.

Bringing out my food processor, I figured that this would be the quickest way to fine chop the ingredients. First in went the Scotch Bonnets. Notice that I used both ripe and unripe ones.

Next I threw in the garlic, Roma tomatoes, onions, shallots, and limes.  Yes, I did not seed the Scotch Bonnets.  I wanted heat.  Neither did I seed the tomatoes nor did I peel the limes.  Does this mean I am crass? Hey, possibly.  I added the Worcestershire sauce, the salt, the sugar, and the vinegar.

I heated some vegetable oil in a pan and and set the burner to about medium.  Next I added the chopped mixture and heated everything to boiling.  The aroma of the cooking relish was certainly piquant.

Bottling my Scotch Bonnet Relish I filled three half-pint-size Mason jars.  I've put the cooled down and filled jars into the refrigerator.  I'll try my Relish in about two weeks.

But I cheated, sort of. I tried a tip of a small spoonful of this Scotch Bonnet Relish liquid, and damn... that is hot!

I know that I will enjoy,

Jim

JGE 12 - Part III - Scotch Bonnet Spread

Good Day,

I still have a bunch more of them thar Scotch Bonnets. And I mean a bunch. This time I started off with the idea that I wanted to make some Scotch Bonnet Pepper Sauce. Well that what I thought I was going to make...

The ingredients were some what easy, I mean easy, to obtain here in Tampa. Scotch Bonnets, (and there still is a bowl full remaining), Cho-cho or Chayote, carrots, onions, ginger, garlic, Allspice, oil and vinegar.

The green things are the Cho-cho, albeit Chayote. I have not eaten, actually I have had a mental aversion to, Cho-cho for about half-a-century. I just have recollections of not enjoying eating them as a young boy. Something to do with being stringy because they were old. But what the hell, the recipes that I was surveying included Cho-cho and I figured that the heat and spice from the Scotch Bonnets would certainly mask any perceived Cho-cho negatives.  (And it does...)

And I chopped up and prepared all my ingredients. In the above image, from the bottom up: Scotch Bonnets, Cho-cho, carrots, and onions.  To the right, top down: garlic, Allspice, and ginger. Upper left: Vinegar and my blender.

Next the heated oil in the pan and toss in the onions. Then everything else is thrown in. I think the total cooking time was about 20 minutes. Then the cooked ingredients were all placed into my blender with some vinegar. With everything I had, I put in about 1/4 cup of vinegar.

Most of the other recipes I read instructed that I should then strain out the pulp and drain the sauce. Well after seeing the smooth thickness of what I had blended I thought "Why? What would be wrong if I kept the pulp and all?"

And yes it does look like mustard, but I can assure you there are no mustard seeds or yellow dye added to this experiment. The Scotch Bonnet Spread appeared to be more than passable. And from the processed ingredients I was able to bottle five pints.

I have now used my Scotch Bonnet Spread on a number of types of sandwiches and roll-ups. I have used it instead of butter, and I tell you that there is a little bite to the Spread. It is definitely something I could eat over and over again.

And I still have about two dozen more Scotch Bonnets, and I've got some more ideas.

I am enjoying,

Jim

JGE 9 - Part II - Scotch Bonnet Pepper Pickles

Good Day,

Well I said in my first Scotch Bonnet Peppers' post I have started to work on some recipes and experiments that I thought may interest my palate.  I have a lot of Scotch Bonnets, thanks B&J, and I figured that there was no way that I would be able to eat one every single day for the next two months with every meal.

Just an fyi for any who have never eaten a Scotch Bonnet Pepper, it is somewhere about 100 times, give or take, hotter than a Jalapeño pepper.  And this is about as hot as I will go.

The first recipe I found definitely intrigued me.  It isn't sauce but it is a fast and easy recipe to make pickles using the Scotch Bonnets and a number of other ingredients.  The recipe that I discovered is called Extreme Caribbean Pickles from CaribbeanPot.com.

And I had a lot of the ingredients as indicated by Chris De La Rosa's posted recipe.  Of course I did twist the amounts and added some other stuffs.

Obviously I included Scotch Bonnet Peppers and then a number of Red Thai Chilies and one green hot long pepper.  This is going to be one hot concoction.

Green papaya, bitter melon, garlic, carrots, limes, Clementines, salt, Kosher salt and pickling vinegar are the other ingredients.  (I didn't take a picture of the Clementines or the carrots.) And then everything is prepped and sliced and chopped.  Now to stuff the pepper pickle salad into the Mason jars.

Looks like the amount I chopped and sliced up can fit into two quart and one pint Mason jars. Once packed into the three jars I topped each with some pickling vinegar.

I placed all three jars in the refrigerator, the one with the malfunctioning ice-maker, and I am gonna let them set for about 10 days to two weeks. I can tell you now that I grabbed one of the slices of carrot, just to taste, and I can assure you that this mixture of pickles is gonna be HOT... very interesting, but very hot.

I'm going to enjoy, and I still have about three dozen Scotch Bonnet peppers left over.

Jim

JGE 8 - Part I - Scotch Bonnet Pepper Sauce

Good Day,

Today I came home with Harvested a bunch of Scotch Bonnets and now looking for recipes to make sauce. I do like spicy and hot additions to most of my meals.


I have found a couple of recipes... and my mouth begins to water.  I need Scotch Bonnet peppers, carrots, Cho Cho - aka Chayote, garlic, ginger, onions, Allspice, vinegar and oil. Another includes Jalepeños and sugar. And another includes bitter melons, limes, cilantro, and green papaya.

And the drag continues, two weeks without my computer. I am somewhat frustrated that my regular PC has not been returned. I now realize how much my live has become PC-dependent, especially when I do write five different blogs. Even in this day and age of electronic database updates and frequent changes, a supplier of a required part makes the mistake and sends the necessary component to an old, old address of the computer builder. I am currently experiencing a shade of keyboard withdrawal.

But I am enjoying eating...

Jim