Homemade hot and sour feasts

Ready to taste my newly made Southwestern Hot Sauce bottled in recycled akvavit mini bottles? Me too, in about a week or two when the sauce has matured a bit. It is made from organic jalapenos and bell peppers, plus a lot of spices. I hope it is hot but not too hot. It was made from jalapenos and dried ancho pepper powder, plus other spices. This weekend I also made sambal oelek (a spicy Southwest Asian condiment, packed in an old baby food jar (I knew they could be used for something good). Sambal is just chilies, a tiny bit of salt and sugar, and a little distilled vinegar. I used the Sapporo variety of chilies for this, mainly because that is what I had just harvested from the garden.

And then I packed lots of herbs into vinegars that are now maturing. You take herbs (clean, but no need to wash them), stuff them in the bottom of a jar, heat up white wine or apple cider vinegar, pour it over the herbs boiling hot, close tight and swirl around niside to sterilize all the surfaces inside, let sit for 2-3 weeks, then remove herbs and put ready vinegar in bottles.

I made lemon+mint, tarragon+garlic, chilipepper+oregano+thyme, basil+chilipepper+chinese chives, plain basil, sage vinegar (that is the photo of the rounded leaves with little hairs on them) and some more. I filled a whole big jar with fresh hot serrano chilies and poured hot vinegar over them too, in a month or two they are ready to be eaten by PP. The rest of us think they are a bit (rather a lot) too hot for human consumption directly out of the jar.

I also made basil-infused olive oil which smells fantastic! You take lots of basil leaves, put them in a pot with a cup of olive oil, let is boil slowly for 5 min (not get too hot!), then let it cool, strain away the leaves and bottle it up. Store in fridge. The vinegars you don't need to store in the fridge. (This last photo is from left to right: basil oil, pickled serrano chili peppers, and mint+lemon vinegar.)