Lemon Pepper Hot Sauce

Ingredients:

12 Lemon Drop peppers, seeds removed, coarsely chopped
2 Mad Hatter peppers, seeds removed, coarsely chopped
1 small red bell pepper (or ½ standard size), coarsely chopped
½ cup carrots, sliced small
5 small cloves garlic, peeled & crushed
¼ medium white onion, coarsely chopped
1 TBSP olive oil
½ cup rice wine
¾ cup (more or less) water
1 TBSP honey
1 tsp coriander seed, roasted & crushed

Comment: could use some salt.


Instructions:

• Wear rubber gloves and a face mask.
• Seed all the peppers. Coarsely chop them.
• Peel and crush the garlic.
• Chop the onion coarsely.
• Chop the peppers, ⅛” thick.
• Heat the olive oil in a medium frying pan.
• Saute all of the above until the onions begin to think of transparency. Stir constantly.
• Add some of the water and simmer until everything is beginning to soften.
• Meanwhile, toast coriander seed. Crush it.
• Add the rice vinegar, honey & toasted & crushed coriander seed until carrots are soft.
• Cool the mixture some.
• Blend the mixture real fine.
• Cool completely.
• Fill bottle or jar and refrigerate.


Next time:
• ½ tsp or so of salt.
• ¼ cup or so lemon or lime juice.
• a tsp or a TBSP of peeled, ground ginger root.
• a little tarragon, fresh is better, ground is acceptable.
• Some cilantro or even parsley. Maybe some chives.
• a little batch of fresh basil.
(Courtesy Ed Currie of Puckerbutt.)

Christmas Peppers

On Christmas Eve, I harvested a goodly lot of peppers. What else can you do when you have so many, but dry them for spices?

When this batch was completely dry, on Christmas day, I ground it all - in a single batch - to powder. 

This is, in my completely subjective opinion, the best tasting pepper powder I've ever made: fruity and hot and full of complex flavors!

Components:

• Lemon Drops were the primary flavor component, and gave the spice its fruity elements. 
• There are only two Jalapeno peppers here. The others that look like them are Felicity: a nearly heat-less version of Jalapeno. These kept the flavor up, but the heat under control.
• There are two small Habanero peppers in the back.  
• Two Hungarian Cherries contribute substance and a bit of heat. 
• Two Big Jim peppers (large, green) are good, mild flavor. These also kept the heat  under control.
• And I think the smaller green ones are Serrano: modest heat. 

These were so good that I made another batch the following week. 

Montreal Chicken Seasoning

INGREDIENTS
4 tsp coarse salt
4 tsp garlic flakes
3 tsp onion flakes
2 tsp cracked pepper
2 tsp parsley
2 tsp crushed red pepper
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp thyme

INSTRUCTIONS
Combine ingredients in a glass jar and shake well to combine. If seasonings are whole, process in a blender or food processor so that they're still large, but not whole.

Guy Spice (Spiced Pepper Mix for Grinder)

Ingredients:

• rainbow peppercorns
• white peppercorns
• whole allspice
• whole cardamom seeds
• whole anise seeds
• whole celery seed
• whole caraway seeds
• dried basil
• dried garlic chunks
• dried pizza peppers

Comment: the mix is more than two thirds peppercorns: maybe half a cup rainbow, a couple TBSP of white, and between half a TBSP and one and a half TBSP of the other spices. I bought them bulk; the lady at the checkout counter looked at me funny.

I used a rainbow peppercorn mix, and added additional white peppercorns, because I like the mild white pepper better than black pepper. I would have added more green or rose peppercorns if I could.

The allspice was hardest to find, and perhaps the most rewarding. I chose mostly tiny whole allspice berries, and cut the larger ones in half. Cardamom, caraway and anise fairly important in the mix. The basil, garlic, celery and pizza peppers don’t do a lot to add to the mixture of what I was trying to accomplish.

I like it. I think this is going to be my primary “generic pepper seasoning” for a while.

Load the whole mix in a pepper grinder, and away you go! 

Making Lemon Powder

I wanted to make some spices for cooking fish. I wanted citrus. I can pour (or squirt) lemon juice on the fish, but it always washes the other spices off, and that's not wonderful.

So I sliced three lemons and a lime real thin, and dehydrated them. I gave an extra long time in the dehydrator, because I wanted to make a very dry powder.

I removed the rind from all the lemons and loaded them into the grinder. 

This is what the dehydrated segments look like. Kinda weird.

Ground into powder, it's not so weird. It's a very strong flavor.

I added one lime, but included the rind on that one for a little complexity to the flavor.

It's excellent on mahi mahi with dill and a little coconut oil. Definite winner.