Memoman's Turbo Chile - The Recipe (Method)

I am a proud member of the non-legitimized international union of hot chile lovers. Hot, spicy, mouth burning chile.

Food without it just isn't the same, it's just not complete without the brimstone touch of the hell vegetable. When you are out eating at a restaurant or somebody elses house, do you long for the juicy acid of the lava-berry? I know I do.

The pale corporate bottles don't even come close to the pure, real fruit from the earth. To me it's about enjoying the flavour of nature in one of it's most interesting wavelengths of taste. And no pre-manufactured, PR-researched and mass-mediated product can satisfy my very specific needs. I meant flavour, but usually their sauce is pretty weak too, I know how much ignite I can take and so far very  few places can achieve the number of degrees necessary in a mixture to sublimate my tongue.

I love chile pepper, and that is why I have my own recipe. But it's more than a recipe, it's a method, which encourages, above all, experimentation; following your cooking instincts and nuances, because as I said before, only YOU know what is best for YOU.

So I will present you with my way and my process. You can take whatever you find interesting or helpful as a launching pad for your very own chile expression.

• INGREDIENTS:

• Some Garlic: Garlic tends to dominate the flavour, so I only use very little for the spicy kick it has, in small quantities garlic really balances out the equation and unifies the taste of all the ingredients. In this example I used only two small garlic cloves.

• A lot of Chile Peppers: I got some of Panama's Chile Chombo, which is quite hot and has a robust taste, for some it's a bit too much, for me it's ok. I got a mixture of both green and red in here, some prefer green, some red, I like them both and their respective general chartactertistics: green is more plant-like and has more sting, red is more dense and lasting.

• I also asked my vegetable-store-guy for some other surprises he might have in the back, and he gave me these really small, berry-like crimson chile peppers, that are just little drops of demon tears. YUM! I would encourage you to find local organical growers to get your chile peppers, they have the best and healthiest supply and are usually pretty goddamn nice people too.

• Onions: Onions serve the purpose of giving body to the final paste, to homogenize the consistency of the final product. Don't add too much though as it might weaken the hellfire/ml ratio. I used a small/medium sized one.

• Vinegar: Enough to unify the ingredients into a paste without making it too liquid. It's taste is really strong so too much of it can really hurt the flavour. I used about two or three shot glasses worth of it.

• Ground Black Pepper: This is a very personal addition of mine, I really like the taste of black pepper on meat and fried eggs, so I added it once to my chile recipe and have enjoyed it ever since. Sprinkle some into the mix, to your taste. About 5 to 1, compared to salt.

• Salt: A BIG pinch of it, to make the final conjuncture more tasty.

• Sugar: A small pinch, to neutralize just a bit the acid taste from the vinegar. Just a bit, feeling the acid is part of the Turbo experience.

• PREPARATION:

• Chop, dice and slice all that is chop-able, dice-able and slice-able.

• I do garlic in small tiny pieces and then I squish it down with a spoon to make it almost into a translucent paste. I really hate biting into a big chunk of uncooked garlic.

• Throw everything together into the blender and... blend it until it's a somewhat chunky, somewhat homogenized paste. As a word of advice, do not touch the chopped peppers with your hands while chopping or getting them into the blender, because you will get the hot substance in your hands and you might inadvertently wipe your eyes or mouth or nose, and then you'll be entering a world of pain. A world of pain.
  

• Finally get most of the stuff out from the blender, find a container for it and give it a taste! If you smell it you'll notice that it has quite a strong vinegar smell, don't worry about it, it took me by surprise too the first times but then I got used to it. Vinegar seems to dominate the sense of smell, but overall it will taste great.
  

Also, you'll notice that I splashed only around a big spoon-full al over my food. Thrust me when I tell you that at least for my example that is quite enough, this stuff it's insanely hot. Last night my friends came over, one of them is quite the chile aficionado as well, and even though I warned him that he was putting too much, and even though he acknowledged and cutback on it, he still got burned for quite a while after NOT finishing his sandwich.

So there you go, my take on hot chile pepper paste. It's not a step-by-step recipe, it is more of a guide for you to throw in or discard elements and steps at your will, and experience with spices, or different kinds of peppers or things that I won't even think of right now. As you can see I'm not a professional cook, but I do enjoy cooking and chile. So I hope this helps as a boost to your gastronomic independence and enjoyment. Have fun!