[CH] Smoky hab sauce

Alex Silbajoris (asilbajo@hotmail.com)
Wed, 16 May 2001 12:26:39 

Yesterday I made a sauce from the habs that were hickory-smoked with some 
pork a few days ago.  They were still moist and mushy, maybe 1/3 blackened.  
The result was one of the few times I've tasted a sauce and literally 
exclaimed "Wow!"

This was a small batch, maybe only ten ounces total.  It had red habs, 
cherry peppers, and a few red Santa Fe chiles.  I thinned it with rice 
vinegar, and also added a few ounces of a hab/vinegar sauce named Junkyard 
Dog (made for the produce stand named Robert is Here near the Everglades).  
I also added a fair amount of garlic salt.  Finally, it has one half of a 
vidalia onion, which I ran through a small food processor, with more rice 
vinegar, until it had a texture like applesauce.  I ran the peppers through 
a sieve, as usual, to get a sauce smooth enough to go through a squirt 
bottle top.  Then I looked at the mash and seeds in the sieve, and didn't 
have the heart to just toss it.  So I put it in a bowl and let it slosh with 
more vinegar, and (no lie) just about a shot of vodka to help extract more 
essence from the mash.  Then I strained it again.

The result ... You're hit with four major flavors at once - hab heat, 
hickory smoke, salt, and a complex combination of the fresh vidalia plugging 
into the vinegar and garlic flavors.  Definitely not a typical chipotle, 
I've never tasted a sauce like it.

I test-fired it at our local Casa Fiesta last night, on a really nice 
dinner.  The longer you use it, the more the salt catches up to you, so I 
think the next batch will have fresh garlic and less salt, instead of garlic 
salt.  But the flavor weaves into a meal's flavors well.  It would have been 
good with a camarones diablas type of meal.  I also think it would be good 
for spiking an ordinary red enchilada sauce.

Maybe, for the next batch, I could try mesquite instead of hickory, but then 
it would probably be more like chipotle.  OTOH maybe something completely 
different like apple or sassafrass would be a better direction to go.

- A

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