Things I Like - Food

I’m not a huge fan of hot sauces unless they also have flavor. Heat for the sake of heat does not appeal to me - this probably explains why I like many curries (Indian and Thai, particularly) but you can’t pay me to put Tabasco on anything.

The only hot sauce I’ve ever actually liked is Piri-Piri, and it was used as a marinade / grill sauce and not just a squirt over the top additive. Mr. White and I were introduced to Piri-Piri while on a visit with our friends Viv and Paul at their vacation home in the Algarve. The Algarve has quaint little towns, beautiful beaches, fabulous weather and friendly Portuguese. Who really know how to use hot sauce.

The local place that our friends took us to had approximately 4 items on the menu – chicken piri-piri, shrimp piri-piri, roast potatoes and salad. We ordered and ate the whole menu, I wanted to go back the next night but they were closed. We left the following day and I’ve been on the lookout for piri-piri ever since.

It’s hard to find. The sauce is made with African birdseye chili peppers which are pretty scarce in the US. These peppers are hot, rating 100,000 to 225,000 Scoville units (the standard scale for pepper hotness). In comparison, the jalapeno pepper comes in at 2,500 – 8,000 SUs and the tabasco pepper at 30,000 – 50,000. But as I mentioned before, it’s not the heat that I like, it’s the flavor. And in the case of piri-piri sauce, the flavor is basically garlic and lemon.

I had given up on finding piri-piri back home until I saw an article in last week's Food section of the Trib. In addition to a nice walk down memory lane, the article offered a recipe for making piri-piri sauce. Unfortunately, the recipe sounded nothing like what I remembered but it did send me in search of one on the internet. Below is one that I found at Fiery Foods - I'm not sure that it's the real thing but it definitely looks better than the one from the Trib. btw, I would go with the lemon and not the lime.

Piri-Piri Sauce
1 tablespoon crushed dried African birdseye chile*
¼ cup butter or margarine
¼ cup peanut oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons lime or lemon juice, fresh preferred

Melt the butter and add the oil and the remaining marinade ingredients. Simmer for a couple of minutes to blend the flavors. Use as marinade and grilling sauce.

*piquin can be used as substitute - I'm assuming that's another type of pepper