I was absolutely surprised to see that the pepper plants in the garden were still giving more pepper than I had expected. Even though it was October and I had already harvested both the 'Chinese 5 colour pepper' and the 'Chocolate Bhut Jolokia pepper' plant already multiple times, they continued to give and give and give. And that while we already a couple of cold nights here.
I guess the strength of the sun is still enough to keep growth happening. Not a bad thing if you ask me. So what to do now with this endless stash of hot pepper. I had already dried a bunch of them, turning them into chili powder as you were able to see in this post and I have been using them in almost every dish for the last two months.
Now it was time to make a decent sambal from them!
The start of this...
Again, everything around these peppers is handle with care. In my previous post you were able to see that I was using gloves on handling the whole process of cutting them.
Luckily this time I didn't need any hand cutting the peppers, so I just went in the whole process without touching them. Cutting them from the tree with scissors and dumping them in the blender with tweezers.
I used this recipe as some inspiration for making the sambal. I had no idea how many grams of pepper I had so just did a bit of mixing and matching with the ingredients, just thinking on what could be right.
- Peppers everything I had
- 1 Onion in large chunks
- 3 cloves of garlic (or 4 because why not)
- 1 teapsoon of vinegar
- 2 tablespoons of ketjap manis
- 1 tea spoon of sugar
- 50 mililiters of sunflower oil
- a bit of salt
I just put this in the blender and didn't even bother to make it a too much of a smooth cream. I think it is allowed to have the seeds of the peppers inside of there.
After the blending you toss it into a pan to heat the mixture until it boils. Just be super carefull with this again as even the steam coming off of it is literally like pepper spray.
Also...no licking the spoons for your own safety haha 🔥
The result
I cooked a couple of old small jars in boiling water for this. I took as many of the smallest ones I have for this. This because sambal doesn't last forever but also because this stuff is so hot, that you literally only need a knife point to enhance the flavour of your dish.
Better said, a small jar will still last forever. And....they are nice to give away to friends who like spicy food as well. Only for the real heat lovers!
And there it is! A sambal from scratch! Way more easy than I had expected, because this literally didn't even take 10 minutes to make.
I guess I have taken the best possible options for using all of the peppers that were possible this season.