Quick Habanero-Garlic Hot Sauce...

Notwithstanding The Great Soapy Tabasco Fiasco, I do love the distinctly vinegary flavor of Tabasco.

But sometimes, I want that vinegary hot sauce flavor with a little more punch and heat. And I don't want to have to age it in top secret oak barrels for eons before I eat it, either.

Enter this Quick Habanero-Garlic Hot Sauce that's ready to eat in just a few hours. True, the flavor is a little brighter and cleaner and not as developed as the fermented and aged  Tabasco. The texture is of course a little thinner, too.

But it hits those vinegary hot sauce notes, and has the added zip and flavor of garlic and onion. AND you can make it as hot as you like. The great thing about habaneros is that they provide lots of good heat with a delicate and bright chili flavor that isn't muddy or overpowering in the least.

Spoon it in/on anything you'd normally eat with Tabasco, add it to your ketchup, or to your noodle soups, and enjoy! :)

QUICK HABANERO-GARLIC HOT SAUCE

- 1 1/3 cups distilled white vinegar
- 1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 2 cloves garlic, cut into 4 or 5 slices each
- 1/4 of a white or yellow onion, thinly sliced
- 2 or more habaneros, depending on your heat tolerance, sliced into 4 or 5 slices (I used 7 today, but we're chili heads.)

In a clean mason jar or repurposed pickle or jam jar, combine the vinegar, salt, and sugar and stir until the salt and sugar are thoroughly dissolved. Add in the garlic, onion, and chilies, give it a few more stirs, put the lid on, wait a couple of hours, and it's ready to eat.

Store it in the fridge if you like the brighter flavor, or age it in the cupboard for a couple of weeks, giving it a good shake a couple of times a day if you like that more aged flavor.

Happy Hotsaucing!

shinae

Full post and album HERE.

Something About How Family Is Just Like Cooking (oh, and expletives)...

As you might already know, I share a lot about my family. And if it happens that you only see the good, easy and positive aspects, it might be the timing of my posts in your stream or that you're just an overwhelmingly positive person. But I really do try to present my life and relationships in a balanced way.

And I hope it comes across that while I am absolutely grateful that we are a mostly happy and blessed family, our relationships are not without their ups and downs, conflicts, struggles, plateaus and frustrations.

I also hope that people understand that this life you see in my posts and pictures, while genuine, was not always this way for me - not as a mother, not as a wife, and not as a daughter - or for us as a family. It took years, decades in some cases, for the people involved to live with, create, perpetuate, suffer from, deny, then finally recognize and work through lots of difficult and complicated issues, sometimes in textbook "healthy" ways, many times not, to get to this place. Sometimes it's too much *me*, not enough *them*. Other times too much them, not enough me. And finally juggling and rebalancing, we hit a healthy combination of *us*.

And the issues, while fewer, still exist, and we still have to keep cycling through them the same way, but hopefully more efficiently and less painfully with each turn.

But what's resulted is pretty much what you see - many moments of happiness, gratitude, warmth, fulfillment and contentment peppered with fewer and fewer - but still very real - moments of unhappiness, ingratitude, frustation, confusion and general unpeacefulness within ourselves and with one another.

How we got to this mostly happy point in our lives is that at some point we each and together determined that it's not an option not to keep trying, even through those moments when we're convinced we don't want to. 

And since I find myself so rarely blogging here about food anymore, I'm going to stretch this noodle a bit to say that in this way, and in so many ways, cooking is a lot like family.

It's a basic reality, necessity, and obligation of life, even if our modern way of living has progressively led us to believe it's not. We start out thinking it should be easy and intuitive to nourish ourselves in a balanced and enjoyable way, but we hit some snags - burn a pancake, oversalt a stew, overhandle our dough, or neglect our risotto - and taste the acrid, salty, chewy, gummy mess we've made and decide it's just easier to walk away from the mess in the kitchen and let a bunch of disinterested others - restaurants, fast food places, frozen dinners, protein shakes, power bars, junk food - be the primary caretaker of our bodily nutrition.

And every once in a while - maybe Valentine's Day or Hot Date Night - we figure we'll conveniently saunter back into that neglected kitchen and whip us up something perfect and delicious only to find we end up creating the same nasty mess we made that LAST time we were in the kitchen forever ago. Because we didn't put in the practice, patience, diligence, dedication and heart it requires to get to that point where we'll know with a fair amount of certainty that we can walk into that kitchen and whip up something perfectly delicious and fortifying without destroying things.

But that means doing 

- a lot of mundane things (boiling water), 

- a lot of boring and repetitive things (peeling tons of potatoes), 

- a lot of things that will make you cry (chopping garlic and onions),

- a lot of things that are a little tricky (poaching eggs)

- a lot of things that are really disappointing (deflating a souffle)

- a lot of things that are extremely painful (hacking a finger, sticking said finger into a pot of melted sugar because you are a fucking idiot, you really are), and

- a lot of things that are downright maddening (mistaking salt for sugar, stuff like that...)

And then one day you look up to find that you've put in enough practice, patience, diligence, dedication and heart to know that 8 or 9 times out of 10, you can reliably produce for yourself and your family - as we all should - something delicious, nutritious, nourishing and fulfilling. 

And just like family, there will be lots of expletives along the way...

¡Shit! ¡Fuckfuckingfuckety! and ¡Goddammit!-ly yours,

shinae :)

P.S. We're doing an African Food Cookalong this month, if you care to join us. Because what is a blog for if not shameless self promotion??? :D