Page 19 - ALG Issue 2 2025

Making the sauce
•
Your fermented chillies, with their garlic
•
A 400g tin of mango slices, along with
some of their syrup to taste
•
A couple of shallots, peeled, sliced, and
fried in a little rapeseed oil until well
browned, then drained on kitchen towel
to remove as much oil as you can
•
Vinegar of your choice. I used cider vinegar
•
Some of your reserved fermenting brine
1. Place all of the ingredients into a blender.
Use all your chillies, garlic, shallots, and
mango, then – and this is the fun bit –
judge and adjust the amount of vinegar,
brine, and mango syrup to taste.
2. Keep adding, tasting and tweaking,
blending as you go, until you have a hot,
sweet, salty sauce that hits the spot. Make
sure everything’s well blended.
3. When you’re happy with your sauce,
pour it into clean glass bottles and keep it
in the fridge. It’s good to use straightaway
but will be even better after a couple of
weeks.
Refrigerated, it lasts months, depending
on salt and acidity. It may separate – just
shake to mix. Unlike commercial sauces, no
stabilisers are needed!
RECIPES
RECIPE
COMPETITION
WINNERS!
Thank you to everyone who shared their recipes with us – we loved reading
through all of them! Our chilli sauce recipe wins a prize for its fantastic level of
detail, but we also wanted to recognise a simpler, yet equally wonderful entry.
Congratulations to Pat and Nigel, who have each won a Dinner Party Herb
Collection, generously provided by Fyne Herbs! We hope you enjoy your prizes.
Piggies Bum
Ingredients:
•
2/3 good-sized beetroot
•
Plain baguette (garlic flavoured if
preferred)
•
2 rounds (sausage-shaped) of goat
cheese
•
Sea salt crystals
•
Crushed chilli flakes (strength to suit}
or cayenne pepper if preferred
Take 2/3 decent-sized beetroots dug
that day (oversized ones are just
as good), then pop them onto the
barbecue, right into the hot coals (but
not red hot so as they burn) Let them
cook, turning occasionally, until the outer
skin is charred and hard.
Remove them from the coals and
let them cool. Once they have cooled
down take the outer skin off; it should
break off easily, then slice the beetroot
quite thickly. When done, put to one
side.
Slice the bread into sensible slice
thickness (not thin). Lightly toast on both
sides.
add a pinch of sea salt over the beetroot
followed by a slice of goat cheese
(about half an inch) 1500 mm thick on
top of the beetroot then finish off with
a pinch of chilli flakes;
Pop it all under the grill, medium heat.
Once the cheese has started to melt
and bubble, serve as a pre-barbecue
picky along with a cold glass of rose.
Piggies bum can't get better on a
spring evening.
When toasted, place onto one side of
the bread add a slice of beetroot then
Pat Bridge
Allotment and Leisure Gardener | Issue 2 2025 | 19