Our homemade hot sauces are moving forward. Slowly, but they’re moving. We’re testing bottles and working on the design. The good news is that the recipes for our first three sauces are dialled in:
- Jalapeño Lemon
- Habanero Banana
- Habanero Pineapple
The jalapeño is the softest, and the pineapple is the strongest.
We’re staying true to the idea behind these sauces: they’re not here to make you suffer. They’re here to make eating more fun. They bring a good amount of heat, but they shouldn’t kill the taste of the food. They should bring out more of it.
Jalapeño has a strong flavour of its own. We prepare the lemons separately until they develop an almost marmalade-like taste, then add them to the sauce. The result is bright and tangy, and works especially well with rich, fatty food.
The banana sauce gets its sweetness from the fruit and honey. It has a thick consistency, and we think of it as a better ketchup: no added sugar, just fruit, honey and enough heat to make it enjoyable on all the things you’d normally put ketchup on.
The pineapple is our kicker. When you want more heat, it brings it—and the pineapple adds a fruity, savoury flavour to your food. It also makes a great base for other things: mix it with mayonnaise, add a splash to your jus, or put it on your breakfast eggs to wake yourself up.
We have a few test bottles for sale at the restaurant right now. We’re not fully convinced about the bottles yet, so they may still change, and the labels are handwritten. But the sauces themselves are finished and ready to go on your food.
These are the three staples from CHEATS — Hot Sauces made in Ericeira.
This week, we’re also making some special sauces. They won’t be for sale; we’ll be testing them in the restaurant. We bought 15 different chillies from Lucky Bill Peppers, and I’m excited to try them out.
The different flavour profiles were a big surprise. When we picked them up, we tried them fresh from the bushes. Without breakfast, that was a challenge. ;) There were so many different flavours to explore. The smoky, chocolatey ones and the really lemony ones were a massive flavour explosion.
Some of you may have already tried a few of them. We used fresh chillies in the crema for our Phở-inspired sandwich.
We’re planning to use more of these peppers in our own sauces, but only in strictly limited runs.