Home Made Tobasco Sauce

If there is one thing that grows in abundance here in the South Okanagan, it is with out a doubt, Chilis. A plethora of peppers, a complete spectrum of capsicum, if you will. These delectable treats come in all shapes sizes and vary in heat. There are the mild bell peppers that we see all the time, and the jalapeno that everyone is well accustom to, and for the most part tolerant to. Then there are all the bananas and the cayenne and the habanero and so on and so on. Then there is the Bhut Jolokia or Ghost Pepper. This is by far the hottest pepper in the world with a scoville rating of over 1,000,000. As a point of reference, a habanero clocks in at anywhere between 100,000 and 350,000 while a Tobasco chili hits a meager 2,500. This bhut jolokia is no laughing matter, as many of us a work found out recently. Come to think of it, it was a laughing matter. It was hot, bloody hot, fire and brimstone hot, if you catch my drift. None of us had the intestinal fortitude to chew on a seed or two and for the first time in my life, there wasn't a single person pulling the "sissy" card on anyone to do it either. Before the burn came a great flavor though, as with a habanero. All of these peppers grow in abundance here in the South Okanagan as I stated earlier, so, buy in bulk, save a few bucks, and stock pile on the hot sauces. People love hot sauce as a gift.

I didn't plant any peppers in the garden this year because I knew that I had visions of grandeur for my hot pepper mash. Last year was the Maiden voyage floating in the sea of fermenting capsicum and it was a smashing success. I made a 1L jar of pepper mash last year and 6 months later I yielded about 500mL of usable fermented hot sauce. That was all well and good but I had to use sparingly all year and that was not ideal for me. This year I went big, not too big, but big enough. I bought 50Lbs of chilis. What fun, what total glee. I was giddy the whole way home and upon arrival got straight to work. My goal was to make a habanero hot sauce for the spice lovers, a standard hot sauce for everyday use and about 15L of hot chili mash. All of which were accomplished in a few hours, even though while the habanero sauce was bubbling away it seemed like the riot police were firing pepper spray though my kitchen window with a fire hose.

Hot sauce is hot sauce. Generally, some onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, vinegar etc, all cooked together and pureed. Mmmmmmm delicious, nothing wrong with that. Hot pepper mash on the other hand is something that proves that delayed gratification is always sweeter in the end. Basically, you weigh your chili's and then measure out 10% by weight in salt. Chop up by hand or in a food processor or meat grinder your chili's, mix with the salt, add a touch of vinegar to prevent molding and your done. Put the mixture in a sterile glass jar or crock then cover with a few layers of plastic wrap right on top of the chili's. What you want to do now is poke a few holes in the plastic to allow for the gasses to escape during the fermentation. There is a problem with this, now that there are holes all sorts of tiny invisible living matter can enter and wreak havoc upon our precious chili mash. Salt makes a great fortification, it allows the gasses to move freely up and out of the pot but prevents any living matter from penetrating. Isn't salt magical?

Now comes the delay portion of our delayed gratification program. Let the mash sit in a cool dark place(like a teenagers heart) for a minimum of 3 months. Avery Island Tobasco sauce ages their famous brew for 3 years in oak barrels, but for most of us 6 months to a year is plenty. I pressed mine after 6 months last year and it was great, this year I did two pots so that I could press one after 6 months and try the other pot after a year of aging.

What is all this pressing that I'm talking about you ask? Well, much like wine, it is the juice you want not the solids. So, when your fed up with the delay and ready to get to the gratification part what you need to do is strain the liquid through a fine mesh sieve or some cheese cloth. It's good to go. That's it. You can taste it and see if you want to add any more vinegar to it, I did with the batch I did last year, the salt should be fine. Oh, and don't let the color get you down. I used a mix of red and green chili and my mash looked like mud. I'm sure if you wanna get all anal and use just pretty red ones, you'd probably end up with a much more tobasco looking product.

So there it is, all you need to know about making hot pepper mash. Sooooooo, so simple and so damn good. Hope you all give it a try. Above is the two different pots of chili mash, hot sauce in the larger jars, habanero hot sauce is the little ones on the right and to make sure that there was no waste, I dehydrated the seeds and skin I strained out of the hot sauce to make my own chili powder. Good times.

Sean Peltier

Feeling a little ashamed.

Some good friends recently lent me their favorite cookbook, Lord Krishna's Cuisine by Yamuna Devi. This book is by far the largest and most in depth Indian vegetarian cookbook I have ever seen. To say the least, in seems to be all encompassing. Being the lover of bread that I am, I went straight to the pages on traditional breads. I figured that I would start with Chapati.

Chapati is one of the simplest and most common Indian breads. The ingredients are as follows: Flour & water. That's it. Now, some people like to add a little bit of salt and a touch of oil but other than that there is nothing else to it, or so I thought. I made the dough to the exact specifications of the recipe, cooked them the same way as the recipe and in the end was left with something that resembled a chapati but I knew that it wasn't right. A chapati once rolled out, cooked in a griddle and then toasted over open flame should, and I stress the word should, puff up with steam leaving the inside hollow much like a pita. No matter what I did I couldn't get them to puff up properly. I got a little pocket here or there but nothing that would make me happy enough to declare victory. So I tried another batch and another batch with one epic fail followed by yet another. Full of frustration I went to bed.

Upon awakening the first thing I did was think about chapatis. I had a trick of my sleave that I knew would bring me success. Nisha. Nisha is one of our dish washers at work, a lovely Indian woman most likely around my age. She is not a professional cook. However, anyone who likes Indian cuisine knows that the women are the key to it's magic. If anyone could show me the way of the chapati, it would be Nisha.

When I got to work I asked her if she would be so kind to show me how to make Chapatis. With nothing but kindness in her heart she obliged. She made the dough the same way I make my french and Italian doughs, without a recipe. I figured out right away what I was doing wrong. I was trying to make chapati with the same methods I would apply to European breads. The chapati does not need such a vigorous work out, it doesn't need to rest before you shape it and it can be torn off into pieces as opposed to pinched or cut. In no time flat we were making the perfect chapati, the same quality that you would find in the finest Indian restaurant you have ever eaten in. All this, made by our dishwasher. Now, none of this surprised me. I knew when I asked her, she would know how to make it. That wasn't me assuming that all Indian women could make chapati, it was me knowing for sure that all Indian women can make chapati.

This is where the feelings of shame started to creep in on me like diabetes on North American youth. Just to be sure, I asked Nisha if everyone of her Indian friends and all of here family can make chapati, roti, naan etc. " all the women" she replied. Now, I'm not suggesting that all women should be cooking up a storm at home all the time. However, I started to feel very sad for our culture. What is the one dish that every Canadian can cook? Nothing. I asked a few of the cooks at work If they could think of something that everyone knows how to cook. The best answer that I got was from Jeff who said that perhaps two generations ago most of our relatives knew how to preserve fruits and vegetables through the means of canning. I think that that is fair to say, I seem to remember family members having preserves around from time to time when I was a wee little tyke. Now, even that extremely valuable skill has fallen by the wayside. How many people do you know(including yourself) that could just throw together a quick loaf of sandwich bread without a recipe? If you can't name more than one or two do you think that you should be slightly worried? I sure do.

Shannon and I just had her 15 year old brother stay with us for the summer and I was astonished to find that something as simple as cooking pasta noodles or rice or even a fried egg was something completely foreign to him. And I don't think he would be offended by my mentioning that he is a little over weight. How could that even be possible. I think that we as a nation need to start looking toward food education not just for the youth but also for the adults. It seems as though the majority have lost touch on the reality that food is in fact keeping them alive. Food is not just something that should be quickly swallowed and then forgotting about until if leaves us looking the same way that it entered us. Food, water and shelter are the three things people need to survive, or so I've been led to believe. I must laugh at the Irony that people in the west have put such an importance on shelter as status symbol that along the way to gaining enough money to live in lavish homes they no longer have time to cook or even enough money to buy decent food. Convenience, it seems, has a much higher price than many of us had bargained for.

I challenge anyone who reads this little blog of ours, to learn how to make some sort of bread in one week. Chapati is really easy, cheap and healthy. A simple french bread has only five ingredients and one of those is water. Give it a shot, it's liberating to know that if all else in your life comes crumbling down, at least you can make some bread. It has kept starving people alive for a long time and it has kept smiles on the faces of those who can have the luxury of eating it for pleasure. Oh, and if you have a child, please show them how to cook a pot of rice or some pasta if you haven't already, heck, it will even make your life easier.

Sean Peltier

Edible Wild Foods and Medicinal Plants in the Oliver Area

After reading the July 6th post "In the Weeds", I wondered if I could identify 10 wild plants from the South Okanagan. The article had me wandering through childhood memories and reminiscing about the wild plant harvests I have done over the last few years. I don't know if I can come up with 10 plants,but, I do know of a few plants that are local,wild and edible.

When I was a little girl, I remember my Italian grandmother foraging in our back yards and lanes. Very few fancy sprays and pesticides were used around here then,so, I would imagine that everything she found was perfectly safe and usable.

The staple item that Grandma collected was dandelions. The tender,young leaves were made into salads, and the slightly larger ones were wilted in a pan with olive oil and garlic. Delicious...just as good as chard, and available before the chard was. We never grew spinach here then, Grandma said that it was just too hot here to grow spinach. So, we planted chard and beets, but picked the dandelions while we were waiting for the garden to grow! Later on in the season, dandelion flowers could be harvested to make wine. I remember one of my aunts deciding that since the prices they were getting for their fruit was so low; she might as well leave the fruit on the trees and go pick the dandelions growing profusely beneath the trees! I think she figured that jugs of homemade wine would help them get over the pain of very little profit on the orchard! OH..and yes, she made a very fine wine.

Grandma also collected the wild chamomile that grew EVERYWHERE here in those days (I haven't seen any here in a long time now). She made a tea with it and used it in the same way you would used domesticated chamomile. she also collected a wild plant that she called Malvia (Italian?). The correct name is Malva parviflora, or cheeseweed. I have heard it called many different names, none of which really made sense (bread and butter weed,being one), but, it is called cheeseweed became the fruit,when mature, looks like miniature wheels of cheese. Malva can be steamed, or sauteéd in the Italian way, or even eaten raw in salads. I don't remember my grandmother cooking it, although she very well could have. She used it in a tea for sore throats, coughs AND constipation..a cure for everything it seems.

Oh, another memory just came to me..Grandma pinching the tendrils off of the grape plants in her backyard arbour, and telling me to chew them..they were slightly tart and astringent and I remember that my mouth would dry out after chewing them for a bit. She said that it was good for sore throats and colds. Speaking of grapes, not only did we eat the grapes, make jelly, chew the tendrils,but,we used the leaves as well. Grandma always put one or two leaves in the bottom of the quart sealers when she made dill pickles. She said they were for flavouring as well as keeping the dills crisp. I still use leaves when making pickles.

My Canadian grandmother was NOT impressed with the local Saskatoon berries. She was from the prairies were the GOOD ones grew! I remember my father and Grandma being very happy when the prairie relatives arrived with quarts of canned Saskatoons! grandma said that the local ones were only good for jelly as they were small, extremely seedy and rather dry. She made jelly from the local ones years ago, when the orchards were young, and fruit was hard to come by.

Both of my grandmothers waited for late summer and autumn in the early years. They would harvest rosehips from the wild roses that grew everywhere. The hips are picked in the early fall when they are a brilliant red and still plump and shiny. They make a very good, tart jelly and are extremely high in Vitamin C. Grandma once told me that in the early years here, she was very grateful that the roses grew so well. The orchards were still not much more than sticks in the ground and she was desperate for fruit to preserve for winter..she made many,many batches of rosehip jelly then.

Another treat in late summer or early fall is the local elderberries. They are NOT edible raw (not poisonous, just taste terrible), but when juiced make a jelly that cannot be beat for flavour. Wait until the berries are black, with a good bluish bloom, still plump and juicy. Cut off as much of the stems that can be removed (stems and leaves can be dangerous in large quantities), then juice and preserve for use later on. Venison steak with pan juices mixed with a dollop of elderberry jelly is quite incredible. I have used the jelly with wild grouse or quail as well..but, my favourite is just slathered on buttered toast. The juice with sugar added makes a terrific drink as well. Earlier in the year, the elderflowers can be harvested, dipped in batter and deep fried. Don't take them all though, save some to grow! And don't forget elderberry wine...

My father used to tell me that the earliest pioneers ate the fruit of the Mahonia aquifolium or Oregon Grape as we call it. It looks like grapes and grows on a cluster-like stem. They are not palatable raw, but make a jelly with a really wonderful, strong grape flavour. Pick them in late August, while they are still plump.

Local pincherries or chokecherries grow everywhere in the hills around Oliver. They ripen in later summer...don't pick too early, very ripe is better for flavour, as the jelly made sets very well. It has an interesting flavour.

I'm sitting on my front porch right now. Across the road, on the mountain side, I see Red Sumac, Sagebrush, Greasewood, Prickly Pear Cactus, Saskatoon bushes, and Mullein to name just a few. Every one of those plants are either edible, have a medicinal value or are jut usable in some way!

Red Sumac berries are edible,can be made into jelly,catsup, or a refreshing drink..steep berries in cold water for several hours, it has acitrus flavour.

Sage is not edible but makes a terrific insect repellant when burned.

If you can find them, the fruit of the prickly pear cactus is tasty!

Greasewood (Antelope Bush) is mostly used for tinder, but has many medicinal values as well.

Saskatoon Berries..jelly...

Mullein has dozens of uses. All parts(except seeds...) can be used, root, leaf and flowers. This plant is used mostly for medicinal purposes. But, in pioneer days and earlier, the leaves were used to line boots to keep the feet warm, (hence, the name, flannel weed), the flower stalk was dried, dipped in tallow and used as a torch or candle. The only part of the plant that is poisonous is the seed. The leaves were also used (smoked) to aid lung congestion and the flowers steeped in olive oil for earaches, when beeswax was added, it was used as a balm for irritated skin.

There you go...I have made a list of 10 items that are edible, and more that ae usable in many ways....what else can we find?