Recipe - Hot Sauce

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I learned how to make this hot sauce from my friend Rebecca, a small-town Kansas girl who ended up marrying a friend of mine from high school who is Lao-Hmong. Not only does she make this great hot sauce, her sticky rice and papaya salad are amazing too. I have a lot of friends who are in interracial marriages and I am always impressed by the ones who adapt and embrace a completely different culture. Although I love my husband and his Irish roots, I never quite fell in love with bubble and squeak, beef stews or potatoes served a hundred ways. I much prefer the bright, spicy, acidic flavors of southeast Asian food. Give me some lime, cilantro and fish sauce and call me a happy camper.

Rebecca makes this hot sauce by hand in a mortar and pestle so the colors are brighter and the flavors have more depth. I am lazy so I throw the whole lot into a mini food processor and bzzzzzzz, blend the crap out of it. This is a yummy dipping sauce for grilled steak and chicken and sticky rice, but with all the fresh ingredients, it will only last one extra day in the fridge. I poured the hot sauce into a long-necked bottle (which is what I had laying around), but a wide-mouth jar is much better for this chunky hot sauce. I added a hand-drawn label, created during some extremely dull moments of jury duty. 

Read the recipe after the jump.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Fresh Fishy Hot Sauce

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

a handful of grape or cherry tomatoes

a handful of cilantro

2-3 cloves of garlic

5+ Thai chili peppers

1-2 tablespoons of fish sauce

sugar if you make it too hot

Linh's Lazy Way

Throw all the ingredients in a food processor and blend. Adjust your ingredients until you like it. Sometimes, I squeeze in a bit more lime or splash in some extra fish sauce. I like it stinky and sour. If I make it too spicy, then I add a bit of sugar to calm the heat.

Rebecca's Traditional Way

You need a baked clay mortar and wood pestle to make this.* If I remember correctly, she put the peppers and garlic in first and pounds them until the pieces have broken up. Then she adds the tomatoes and pounds them. This really blends all the flavors together. Fish sauce, lime and chopped cilantro are stirred in. Don't forget to adjust the flavors as needed.

*I have linked to a site to show you what it looks like but you can probably get one at your local Asian market for half that.