The Hot Sauce Cookbook by Robb Walsh Page B

juice
    Salt and freshly ground black pepper
    Parsley sprigs, for garnish
    Prepare a hot fire in a grill or preheat the oven to 475°F.
    Place the bell peppers, jalapeños, and eggplants on the grill and cover, or place on a baking sheet in the oven. Cook, turning occasionally, until well charred, 20 to 30 minutes. Place the vegetables in a paper bag, or put them in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap, and let them steam for at least 10 minutes or up to 1 hour. Peel off and discard the burnt skin along with the stems and seeds.
    Coarsely chop the vegetables and put them in a pan with the garlic and olive oil. Simmer over very low heat, stirring often to avoid burning, until the garlic is soft, about 15 minutes. Remove the vegetables from the oil and allow to cool, reserving the oil.
    When the vegetables are cooled, put them in a food processor with the lemon juice. Pulse five or six times until just combined. For a chunky ajvar, add the reserved olive oil and pulse a few more times. For a creamy ajvar, slowly drizzle the cooled olive oil from the pan into the processor with the blades turning, until the mixture forms a smooth emulsion. Add salt and pepper to taste.
    To serve, transfer to a bowl and garnish with parsley. Store in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.
    Green Ajvar: Substitute 8 poblano peppers or 10 roasted green chiles for the red bell peppers.

 
    ———CHAPTER 6———
    CHILEHEAD CHEFS’ HOT SAUCES
    Most of the chefs I know love hot and spicy food. After work, they go out for a late night snack and order pad thai superhot or taco truck gorditas drenched in chile de árbol salsa. But once they don their whites, the hot flavors get hung up with the street clothes. Why are chile peppers looked down on by classically trained chefs? Is it because the French dominate our culinary training academies and they have “delicate” palates?
    Hot and spicy flavors are relegated to the ghetto called “ethnic food.” But lately the line between fine dining and ethnic restaurants has been blurred by pioneering chefs. At his wildly successful Momofuku restaurants, Korean-AmericanDavid Chang uses chiles without apology, while atZak Pelaccio’s Fatty Crab and Fatty Cue, hot and spicy is part of the appeal.
    In Houston,Bryan Caswell at Reef puts Sriracha remoulade on fried catfish banh mi sandwiches andChris Shepherd at Underbelly serves a ballsy blend of Southern, Asian, and Latino dishes organized around local ingredients. His dish of braised rabbit in Korean gochujang with chewy rice dumplings is spectacular. The duck tamale and fried duck egg with red sauce and pico de gallo thatTim Byres serves at Smoke in Dallas is spicy, too.
    But in the hippest, Ferran Adrià–inspired, “food as art” fine dining restaurants, you find foams, powders, capsules, and liquid-nitrogen frozen bon-bons, and no fiery thrills. For people with a serious chile habit, this can be real problem. It’s a little shameful to follow a stellar fine dining experience with a crude pepper fix, but that’s exactly what happened whenFrancis Lam and I found ourselves sucking down hot sauce–laced tacos after midnight at a Mission Street burrito joint after eating our way through a wonderful twelve-course tasting menu down the street at Commonwealth. (We were in San Francisco for a taco truck conference, after all.)
    The first time I ever saw these two world views collide was at The Inn at Dos Brisas, a luxury dude ranch near Washington, Texas. The Inn is a member of the exclusive Relais & Chateau group, a portfolio of properties that includes a lot of European castles and Caribbean islands where very rich people relax. I was there writing a story about the gardening operation and the rare heirloom tomatoes. At the time, the kitchen was under the direction of superstar chefRaj Dixit.
    Dixit works with the international restaurant group run by the Egyptian-born chefMichael Mina these days. But when I met him, he was supervising twenty-four acres of