Zed's Red Fermented Weird Sour Chilli Sauce

Well i'm back to work next week so i've been taking a break from hacking before getting back into it. Brewed some beer (second wart going now), cleaned the windows (i'm still surprised how much difference it makes), did some more preserving and cooking ...

Many moons ago - last year some time - I fermented some red chillies with the goal of making some tobasco style sauce. I did the same from some green chillies and I just ran out of that (or just can't find it in the cupboard), so I thought it was about time I did something with the red ones before the mould ate it all ...

So I scraped off the white mould, added some vinegar (1/2 a cup or so, didn't measure), lime and lemon juice (4 of each), blended it, sterilised it and bottled it. No sugar or anything else.

If nothing else it has an absolutely amazing colour ...

Flavour is interesting - quite sour. Definitely nothing like tabasco (unlike the green one I made which was much more vinegary and fairly close to green tobasco sauce), but it does emphasise the sour note from the fermentation which is what I wanted - the green version masked it too much in the vinegar. Given it was from Cayesan chillies it isn't too spicy either. House-mate thought it was reminiscent of green mango.

I have a small jar of habaneros i fermented too, originally I was intending to make a `super' tabasco sauce with that, but I think I will just leave those as sliced pickled chillies. Damn damn hot too - can't really add more than about 1/2 teaspoon to a bowl of food without suffering too much ...

Oh I tried the salted kumquats i made a few weeks ago. Well, they taste like salty kumquats in lemon juice and a little like lime pickles. Not sure what i'll do with them ...

It's almost time to look at getting some seedlings going again this year.

Update: I really like this sauce, very nice as a dipping sauce for pork or chicken. Very moreish, and not too overpowering in heat. I also found a use for the kumquats - works pretty well in a bean dish i've been making (bacon, beans, green tomatoes, herbs, stir fry, not stewed) to add some depth - although it's easy to over-do the salt.