making sambal from scratch

One of the many culinary skills i have learnt lately is how to make sambal from scratch. Its not that hard, just very time consuming. The trick my mum taught me was - keep simmering the sambal over a low heat until you start to see oil, by then the sambal should be a deep, rich velvety red colour.

And so sambal making i did.

Only because the chilli trees in our back yard were just dripping in lil pockets of red. And it would have been a waste if i just left them there.

Recipe

5 small chillies (small variety thats super hot)

2 large chillies (not hot at all)

1 large capsicum

1 medium onion

5 cloves of garlic

8 medium tomatoes

salt & sugar to taste

**ginger for variations or a different flavour**

- chop up all of the above into blendable pieces. (dont chop tomatoes - they go in later)

- put all chilli ingredients into blender except for the tomatoes

- blend all of the above to smoothish paste - if you want a chunky chilli thats also fine.

- heat up the wok with a good splash of oil

- put blended chilli paste into wok and mix it around. careful to keep stirring otherwise chilli will burn at the bottom.

- slowly chop up the remaining tomatoes and throw it into the work and keep stirring.

- while you are cookig the chilli keep adding salt & sugar until you get the desired taste. Dont be surprised to see how much sugar you use. The sugar becomes the perservative for the chilli and adds to oil/gloss factor which you need so you know when your chilli is ready.

When finished store it in small jars in the fridge or freezer. Depending on how hot your chilli is, you can use it for many other dishes, such as rica rica, sambal kangkong, sambal terrong etc etc.

However in the chilli i made pictured above. i did go a LITTLE overboard on the hot small chillies i used. Instead of using large red chillies, i used a heap of small ones. So the chilli i made above, is crazy hot. SUPER crazy hot. One small bit is enough to heat up your whole mouth. The chilli i made will seriously burn a hole through your intestines and your bum hole. So when i cook with it, i will only need to use a tiny amount with lots of onions, garlic and tomatoes to tone it down a lot.

Anyone want to try?

:oP.clio