I know what y’all want….
So this is not easy. I made a quick hot sauce on the fly from long red cayennes, habaneros, and fish peppers for the Raleigh Tavern Society at Colonial Williamsburg. It was a huge hit. I had 30 minutes to make a sauce that tasted bright, fresh, rich and felt like it had sufficiently steeped.
The peppers we used came from my African Virginian provision garden!
Things got serious:
So here….
I used a Vitamix machine on hand.
I basically pureed a yellow and a red onion, helped along by a quarter cup of Apple cider vinegar each, added about a heaping tablespoon of ginger puree. I also added a tablespoon each of kosher salt, ground cayenne pepper and red pepper flakes. I then added a teaspoon each of black pepper and kitchen pepper and a half tablespoon of hot paprika. I added half my apple cider vinegar which was about a cup. I blended this this together. I then took the washed, capped peppers (about 20 ripe, hot peppers) and blended them in the mixer with the previous mix. I added another 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar and about 1/3 cup of dark rum and hit blend again and adjusted for taste. A little this a little that.
They added a tiny bit of xantham gum to curb separation and to each bottle I added a hot pepper cut in half.
At any rate it was a bright edition to our lovely rustic tables:
The hot sauce went well with the braised greens, chicken, rockfish and rice and pigeon peas. The menu devised between myself and Chef Justin Addison featured Chesapeake and colonial South inspired cuisine. We had cornbread kush, sweet potato biscuits with piped sorghum butter dusted with pink salt, a kale and bacon lardon salad, rockfish over roasted root vegetables, Country Captain–an early Southern curry composed of fried chicken smothered in a spicy sauce and rice and pigeon peas followed by apple dumplings, mini peach cobblers and benne *sesame wafers.
160 were in attendance. They were well satisfied.
Oh yeah and this just happened:
I am privileged and honor to join so many talented, creative people of brilliant intellect and conviction in The Root’s 2017 list of 100 most influential! Special congrats to all my sistas and brotha dem.
Oh yeah, you have your copy of The Cooking Gene yet? Order here.
Afroculinaria 
Amazing. I have a few questions? “fish pepper” and “kitchen pepper” unfamiliar with these. I love the idea of ginger added to the hot sauce. I made some with long red hot peppers (like the ones in your hand above; we get in Chinatown) but it’s so damn hot I can barely use it. Will try to round out with ginger and onion. Thanks for the inspiration! So happy to be watching your success grown. May it continue.
-Jackie
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