Nana Poohah's Green Tomato Pickle

My nana was an amazing woman. Aside from being a generous, loving, witty, intelligent and strong woman, she was amazing in the kitchen.

And she certainly had her specialties...the best raspberry jam you'll eat, the most moreish Louise cake (that always went down a treat with a Milo after a walk around the Picton foreshore in the evenings), the tastiest vegetable soup and the world's best tomato sauce (which I have now made twice, and by made, I mean slaved for eight hours each time to do it). Knowing the time and effort that goes into these things now that I have ventured further into kitchen, I admire her even more (especially seeing as she did it all while having to raise my mother and two uncles!).

She has been missed for the past two and a half years but her memory certainly lives on in the food our family makes, eats and enjoys, especially at those very special family get-togethers.

And she certainly passed on her cooking skills to my Mams who is the most amazing cook and does her mother's memory and food very proud.

Nana, Mams and some random (nah, just kidding Girly... you better be reading this)

I credit any sort of skill or talent I have in the kitchen to both these wonderful women.

Nana shared her life, kitchen and amazing garden with my grandpa. Grandpa Poohah is the most wonderful man you'll ever meet. There is absolutely no one with a bigger heart of gold.

At Christmas time this year he managed to dig out from his shed (the most wonderful treasure-filled man haven) Nana's preserving pan which has seen many a jam and pickle produced in it's time, but of course is spotless and in immaculate condition.

Nana and Grandpa Poohah with my sister Hayley and I
in Dunedin a few years ago

Because of the abundance of Christmas presents I had to haul back from Picton, Grandpa insisted on sending the fairly heavy pan up to me and so it arrived not long after I had returned home, packaged to perfection, and ready for some creations.

This is the first real chance I have had to use it and it was fabulous. Elliot and I decided we had seen the best of the tomato plants this season, and I was sick of giving those pesky birds a free feed, so we decided to pull them. That left me with a kilo and a half of green tomatoes.

Green tomato pickle was one of Nana's creations that I unfortunately never got to try but I asked Mams about it in the weekend and was told it was served with cold roast beef and in cold meat sandwiches with white bread mmmmmm.

The recipe was given to me by Mams who said Nana had copied it out of a recipe book many moons ago. It used pounds and quarts (who knew there was UK and US quarts??) so thank god for online weight converters and the fact I had roughly half the tomatoes so could simply halve the other ingredients (saying maths is not my strongest point is a gross understatement).

So calculations and conversions done, away we went. This is a pretty easy recipe and the only thing you need to really plan in advance is the salting overnight.

Ingredients (this is the recipe halved and converted into metric measurements):

• 1.5kg green tomatoes
• 700g apples
• 700g onions
• 700g sugar
• 1 dsps salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 Tb mustard
• 1.5 dsps curry powder
• 2 Tb flour
• 1L vinegar (didn't specify what type and turns out I didn't have enough of one type of vinegar so went with a white/malt/cider combo)

Method:

• Cut up the tomatoes, apples and onions. Sprinkle with the salt and leave overnight (in the middle of the night - well, 7am on a Sunday morning - I realised that because the pickle is not blended or anything at the end that I probably needed smaller pieces of the fruit as no one really wants half an apple covered in pickle do they? - so cut them fairly small).

I cut them smaller than this

• Next morning add the vinegar and sugar and boil for half an hour.

• Combine all the other ingredients with a little vinegar and stir into the mixture.
• Boil until thick (took about 1.5 hours).

• Put the pickle into steralised jars. 

• And eat. Eat with cheese and crackers and just try and stop yourself from eating it all. It is SOOOO good. Thank you Nana for a fabulous recipe and for everything else xxx

Stuffed marconis

I tried this recipe once before when we had green marconis (a longer and skinnier version of a capsicum) because I couldn't wait for them to turn red and wanted to try stuffed peppers.

I grabbed whatever I had in the cupboard and fridge to make the stuffing - and that's the beauty of these - you can put whatever you like in them.

And now with some beautiful red marconis it was time to recreate this dish.

My inspired addition (if I do say so myself) was the macadamia nuts I had left over from my lunch jaunt to Sydney. I didn't want the entire base of the stuffing to be breadcrumbs so crushed some nuts up in the mortar and pestle and they added a fantastic texture and taste to the stuffing. The recipe stuffs about four medium sized marconis.

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup panko breadcrumbs
• Handful of macadamia nuts, crushed quite finely
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1 Tb capers (chopped up so that I can sneak them in there hoping Elliot doesn't notice)
• 2 Tb sundried tomatoes chopped 
• 4 tsp of the sundried tomato oil
• 4 small red chillies, chopped
• 1/2 large clove of garlic, finely chopped
• Salt and pepper

Method:

• Cut the tops off the peppers and get as much of the placenta (pithy bit) out as possible, being careful not to pierce the skin (these peppers didn't have seeds in them but would need de-seeding if they did).
• Mix all the stuffing ingredients together and stuff into the peppers (easiest down with a teaspoon and fingers).

• Brush the peppers with a little olive oil and barbeque them until the skins blacken and blister (about 15 minutes).
• You can also do them in the oven - about 20 minutes at 180°C.

Serve as a vege side with whatever your heart desires or as a vegetarian starter or lunch.

We had these with BBQ chicken thighs and portobello mushrooms
Delish.

The next venture in terms of stuffing peppers has got to be jalapeno poppers (bacon/cheese stuffed jalapenos crumbed and deep fried... trying not to drool on keyboard...) Stay tuned...

Killer jerky

No, it's not made with the death sauce - but something just as brutal (and actually I did use a couple of teaspoons of the death sauce in some mince for burritos and it was somewhat awesome).

We are slowly and steadily getting ripe chillies every few days and we are fast figuring out different ways of using them (after of course Elliot has cut them open, examined them thoroughly, smelt, felt and tasted a fair bit of each).

Chilli collection - red Jalapenos, Scotch Bonnets, Bhut Jolokias,
Fatalii, Thai chillies,  Wildfires, and a California Wonder
capsicum and Red Marconi in the background

I too have tried a couple this week - about 1/20 of a decent sized Habanero and about the same of a Fatalii. The Fatalii was BRUTAL and also quite bitter. I did not enjoy it at all; the Habanero was equally as deathly but the flavour is much sweeter and you actually get a chance to enjoy some of the flavour before the overwhelming heat and want to die takes over. I got through them ok although got the hiccups for the first time ever with the Fatalii (a common reaction when eating really hot chillies).

The Habanero

This week we have dried a lot of the chillies we got and the Bhut Jolokias (the hottest and baddest ones we have) have been made into a powder. Just the smell of this powder had me teary-eyed.

Dried Bhut Jolokias

The drying process is easy - just cut the tops off and either cut them in half or just chuck em in a food dehydrator whole for about 12 hours (will depend on setting and the dehydrator - although after much searching the only one we found anywhere was at Briscoes so we had to wait for one of their rare sales and got it for about $80).

Once the chillies are dry, grind them in a coffee grinder for a few seconds and Bob's your uncle.

Made the mistake of smelling it!

To make jerky is just as easy really. We have made it many times before (the dehydrator was initially bought to make chipotles but we didn't quite have the jalapenos yet so dried meat it was). It is so yummy and easy and you can basically make it whatever flavour you desire. We use (all measurements are very approximate):

• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
• Half clove of garlic, crushed
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp oil
• 1 tsp chilli powder

I must credit this recipe to Elliot who created it on the first attempt, it was great and has become our standard jerky recipe.

This time we substituted the chilli powder for about 3 tsp of Bhut Jolokia powder (all of the above pictured powder).

Slice some schnitzel or steak into slices depending on how thick you want it - we do fairly thin pieces of schnitzel (the ingredients above are perfect for about four pieces of schnitzel).

Mix all the ingredients above in with the meat. Marinate overnight.

Spread the pieces evenly over the dehydrator trays and put on medium for about 8 hours (perfect if you love the smell of dried meat to come home to after work. Mmmmm dried meat).

It is super good when it just comes out of the dehydrator. Keep it in an airtight container (if you can keep it for longer than a few hours - it is ridiculously addictive, even if your teeth don't thank you for it).

So the verdict on the killer jerky...YUM! Pretty bloody hot but so yum! In fact we are about to dry some more Bhuts for some more powder and schnitzel is definitely on the grocery list for today. This jerky will certainly clear the sinuses but you just can't stop eating it.

Note the strategically placed skull cookie jar in the background

Pickled jalapenos

I love jalapenos. I love jalapenos with cheese and crackers, in wraps, stuffed, on nachos, by themselves, the list goes on.

Unfortunately I find most of the ones you get at the supermarket are too vinegarie (that's a word now despite what spell check tells me) and not hot at all. The best of the bunch are probably Old El Paso ones.

Then there are the La Morena red jalapenos in morena sauce (a kind of salsa type sauce) which are really good. They are hot and make a nice change from the ones in the vinegarie solution.

You can get the La Morena stuff from Farro Fresh, Nosh and limited stuff from Pak n Save (Paul - who I am told I have to refer to as "my good looking lawyer friend" but I just call him Paul - is bound to jump in here and tell me you can of course get them from Albany New World, like the Blair's range of stuff. There, happy Paul?)... or... you can pickle your own jalapenos.

Elliot and I did this once right back when our very first jalapeno plant gave us about four jalapenos, and they were fab.

We now have a fair few jalapeno plants with a fair few jalapenos on them so we pickled some of the green ones we have. You have to make sure when picking green ones to use that you get the ones with "corking" on them - you will see in the picture below what I mean. This basically means they are starting to ripen. You don't want to pick them before that - they are shiny and hard and not good at all.

If left they will ripen fully and turn red - which is what we will do with the rest and then dry and smoke them to make chipotles.

Corking

To pickle jalapenos is very simple; all you need is:

• 2 cups white vinegar
• 2 cups water
• 2 Tb salt

Bring the ingredients to the boil and boil it for a couple of minutes.

In the meantime cut the tops off the jalapenos and slice them down one side - this will let all the liquid get in them. Leave the seeds in.

Put them into a sterilised jar (sterilise by putting in the oven for 20 minutes at 120°C) and pour the boiling liquid over. Make sure you have just sterilised the jar as you need to pour hot liquid into a hot jar. Fill to the top.

Try and get as much of the air out as possible and push the jalapenos down so the liquid starts to get in them.

Screw the lid on and leave for at least a month.

They look awesome! So even if you don't want to eat them they look cool in the kitchen.

Just a wee note to my avid readers (yes, all two of you) - I apologise for the lack of posts. There has been slight trauma and grief at the Sunset household due to three of the aquaponic fish meeting their untimely demise.

El is working hard to try and make sure the two that are left last a while longer and that the system is 100% before we look to get more.

Definitely no photos about that update :(

Thai red curry

Well, what else do you do with Thai chillies except make a Thai red curry?

Just like every other recipe these days, there are a million and one red curry paste and red curry recipes on the net. I knew what basically needed to go into the paste so followed a recipe that I thought had about the quantities and ingredients I would use (the last curry I made was an epic fail as I didn't follow my gut and added far too much shrimp paste and fish sauce making it an inedible salty mess).

I adjusted the recipe along the way but pastes are hard to judge as you really can't appreciate the flavour  until it is fried off and used in a recipe. I did taste the raw paste and it did help me to adjust it (and remind me I had left out the garlic). I find therefore that curries need adjusting according to your taste and when you realise how the paste is tasting once fried off. Here are the ingredients I ended up using for my paste:

Red curry paste

• About 8 small red Thai chillies, cut in half, seeds left in 
• 4 Tb sliced lemongrass (buy in jars from Asian supermarkets)
• 1 Tb coriander stems, chopped
• 1 large clove of garlic, chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped shallots
• 1 1/2 Tb minced ginger
• 1 tsp shrimp paste (don't smell it)
• 1 tsp salt
• zest and juice of 1 lime (most recipes call for kaffir lime which is readily available but I had limes at home and think they work fine)

You can either go all traditional and grind it in a mortar and pestle or use a stick blender as I did. I chopped it all finely in a small food processor first and then chucked it all into a bowl and used the stick blender until a paste formed. I do suggest tasting it at this stage and adding what you think it needs (bearing in mind fish sauce and brown sugar are added to the curry so will add sweetness and saltiness).

This made probably 3/4 cup of paste - probably enough for Elliot and I for two curries although I will do one curry and some fritters with the rest of it.

Thai chicken red curry

• 2 Tb red curry paste
• 1 tsp vegetable oil
• 1 carrot, julienne 
• 1 zucchini, sliced
• half a head of broccoli cut into small florets
• 4 chicken thighs
• 1 Tb brown sugar
• 1 Tb fish sauce
• About 3/4 can light coconut milk
• 3/4 cup chicken stock

Those are basically the ingredients I had in mind but as above, it needed adjusting quite a bit along the way.
My basic method for the actual cooking goes along the lines of:

• Heat oil in a fry pan and add the curry paste. Fry for about two minutes until fragrant.
• Add the coconut milk and stock and bring to the boil. Lower heat to a simmer. 
• Add brown sugar and fish sauce, stir well and simmer for a couple of minutes. I also added a squeeze of lime juice.
• Add the chicken and veges and cover and simmer until chicken is cooked through and veges are cooked but al dente.

Now at this stage I realised a) it wasn't spicy enough; and b) there wasn't going to be enough sauce (gotta have loads of sauce to get that roti into).

Unfortunately you can't just chuck some more paste and liquid in as the paste really does need to be fried off so in a separate fry pan I fried another tablespoon and a half of the paste and then added about another half cup of stock and a touch of coconut milk (I don't like the sauce too pale and coconuty which is why the curry looks a lot darker than you would normally see). I also added about another teaspoon of brown sugar and a teaspoon of fish sauce and a squeeze of lime

So after simmering this extra liquid for a couple of minutes I added it to the curry and left it to simmer until everything was cooked.

Quickly fry off the roti (fabulous frozen roti you take straight from the freezer and dry fry in a pan for a couple of minutes each side).

I would also normally have the rice nicely cooking in the rice cooker during this process but I didn't have any (not really a staple in our house and had forgotten to buy some).

Spoon curry into bowls and top with some coriander.

Well, the result.... the best curry I have made. It was the perfect level of heat, the chicken and veges were cooked to perfection and it was just plain yummy.

Death sauce

I have found my new favourite thing in life. Blair's potato chips. A while back I found this stuff online and wanted to track down where to get the stuff from so I emailed the guy and he told me a few places in Auckland you can source the sauce and other hot and spicy goodies they sell (well I was really only after the potato chips).

http://www.tonguehammerfood.co.nz/hot-sauce.html

Fortunately a dairy about 5 minutes from our place stock the chips so I grabbed a couple of flavours and before rushing out the door to try them was warned by the dairy owner about how hot they are.
Him: "You like spicy stuff?"
Me: "Yeah, love it"
Him: "But these are really spicy"
Me: "Oh good"
Him: "Not like normal spicy chips you would buy"
Me: "Oh that's good, because it is hard to get proper spicy food in supermarkets"
Him" Yes, well these are really spicy"
Me: "Great, can't wait"
Him: "I tried them and thought they were spicy"
Me: "Awesome, thanks"
Him: "Ok, good luck"

Now, racist I am not, but take one guess at what nationality he was. He was basically saying look lady, if I thought they were hot, your white western palate will not be able to handle them.

On my visit back last week to stock up on supplies, I struck up another conversation with him about how hot these were and how he has a few customers who come in just for this stuff. He then directed me to Blair's sauces. He stocked about four different types and pointed me towards the hottest one. The Death Sauce.

Now when the sauce you buy comes in a coffin-shaped box, has a warning on the packet and a skull attached to it, it's probably a fairly ominous sign.

Still, it can't be that hot right? Wrong.

This was bad. I had the tiniest drop and I haven't touched it since. Just looking at it makes me scared.

I will eventually use it and put it in a chilli con carne or nachos or something but for now it can stay in the coffin in the cupboard.

Oh, but the chips - they are awesome! They have chipotle, buffalo wing, jalapeno & cheddar and habanero. I haven't tried the chipotle (the dairy doesn't have them), but the buffalo wing and jalapeno & cheddar ones are super tasty - they are medium heat and are delish! The habanero ones are hot. When a packet of chips can last in my vicinity for longer than an hour they must be hot. In fact the first packet I bought - granted it was a big one - lasted about two weeks. They are so tasty but definitely not your normal spicy chips you'll get from Eta.

Word on the street (well Elliot's chilli/gardening forum thing) is that Blair's are bringing out a Bhut Jolokia one too which I am looking forward to trying. Am also keen to try the other less death-like sauces.

If anyone wants to know where to get them from let me know or I am happy to hook you up with some. Be brave and give them a go.

And if anyone wants to try the death sauce I know a bottle with a drop out of it you can have...

Chomping on chillies

It's been a pretty spicy week. The chillies are slowly ripening and we are tasting and testing along the way.
This week we have tried a Bhut Jolokia, a Jamaican Red Hot, a Scotch Bonnet and a Fatalii.

I try these all by eating the slightest slithers of them - and that is quite enough. They were all fairly hot but each have their own flavour and their own way of being hot and how they affect your mouth and throat.

This morning Elliot and I ate what is labelled a Fatalii but Elliot thinks it is crossed with something else as does not look like a Fatalii. It is knobbly and not that long and wasn't quite ripe but thought we would give it a go.

Because it is an immature pod there were no seeds and it looked a bit dodgy on the inside but nonetheless a slice of the flesh was cut and the smell test was done. You can usually gauge a bit from this as to how hot it will be. It smelt much like a Habanero - sweet but most certainly hot. So down it went. It was hot straight away and the heat stayed right at the tip of my tongue and inside the front of my lips. However the heat went away fairly quickly (about a minute and as far as chilli heat goes, that is good). It was sweet and tasty, fairly hot but no way near as hot as the Habanero  we have had - and a Fatalii would usually be about on par with a Habanero, so still  not quite sure what we ate.

During the week we also tried a bit of a Jamaican Red Hot. Same as the photos below but was ripe and red.

Unripe Jamaican Red Hots

These are awesome looking chillies and this one was ripe for the picking. It certainly was red hot. The taste was good. You can just imagine this being used in Jamaican cooking - the sweetness was there and the hotness most definitely was there. The heat hit almost straight away and I felt it in the back of the throat but it was manageable and lingered for a good few minutes. A tasty but not for the faint hearted chilli.

We have just now tried a yellow Scotch Bonnet.

They come either red or yellow and don't grow too large so the one we picked was perfect. I really enjoyed this one. It was fruity and yummy. The first bit I tried wasn't hot at all but I had picked a bit with none of the placenta (the pith looking bit which houses the capsaicin - the active component of chillies which make them hot). I did harden up though and tried another bit with the placenta in it and it was pretty hot. Not unbearable and quite yummy actually. The heat definitely hit the throat but definitely a chilli I am looking forward to cooking with and will use to try in some Jamaican cooking (Scotch Bonnets are the primary chillies used in Jerk recipes).

Scotch bonnet with the placenta which hosts the capsaicin glands

The idiotic moment of the week was definitely the decision to eat a bit of a Bhut Jolokia. I knew this was going to be bad.

These scare me

Once the Guinness Book of Record's hottest chilli, there was no way this was going to be painless. The little red devil was shockingly hot. I don't even remember the taste. The heat hit the front, the sides, the back, the tongue, the lips. The heat not only lingers but builds. Yes, the worst part of these chillies is at the first bite they don't seem that bad and then the heat builds and before long you are pacing back and forth, not sure where to go, what to do, nothing helps. Elliot's hiccuping and spitting (noting he ate about twice as much as I did) and I'm just trying to figure out what possessed me to do this, no, in fact, I'm not even thinking straight. Reflecting on this, I do think it is the competitive streak in me that makes me do it and thinking that anything he can do, I can also do. I think eating this got me over that. Especially when I know one day Elliot will be eating an entire one of these and also the huge golf ball like Habaneros we have. My part of that process will be filming it for later comic relief.

HUGE habanero

The craziest thing about eating these "super hots" is the rush you get afterwards. I had never experienced anything like it. It's almost drug like and is a super crazy and adrenalin-ish feeling that was a tad awesome. Not really worth the pain to get it though!

The Bhut Jolokia is the hottest chilli we are growing this year so I tell myself it can't get much worse and I am determined to try each and every variety we are growing (this will change next season as Elliot has ordered Carolina Reaper seeds - apparently the world's current hottest chilli and these babies are mental. If you have a thing for seeing grown men cry and vomit watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsm0nE0ROMA)

On the more tame side, we have some very ripe Thai red chillies ready for picking which will become a red curry paste this weekend and a ton of green jalapenos which Elliot is pickling today. The rest of the jalapenos we will leave to go red and they will be dried, smoked and made into chipotles.

Thai Chillies

I am also on the hunt for recipes and ideas for what to do with the ridiculous amount of chillies I will soon have. Elliot loves growing and eating a few but I will be left to make them into something edible (hopefully for friends and family and not just crazies like us). If you are a crazy like us though and love something spicy and tasty without having to grow it yourself, check out my next post.