African Hot Chilli Sauce

If you love spicy foods, chilli sauces have to be your best buddy with your occasional meet-ups with snacks. Frankly speaking I am just the same. I can’t live without spicy foods. Whenever I see green chillies something happens within me and I just can’t stop myself from chopping up, until I realize that it had already gone too far.

Whenever I ate phuchkas I asked the puchkawala to add some chilli paste and chopped green chillies. For churmur it was the same. For jhalmiri, alukabli, ghughni....everywhere I just had only one demand...please make it hot. Add some more chillies please. In the end, they used to give me a spoonful to taste, that whether I required more chillies or not. J

Eating out in Abidjan is thankfully the same for me because of their hot pepper sauce that they serve with the food. I love love love it. They go with almost anything. Chicken, crepe, brochettes, braise, stew, rice and even with savoury food items like alocco (deep fried ripe bananas). The more I was tasting the sauce the more I was becoming eager to have a jar full of that sauce ready in my fridge. But apart from the fiery red colour and the tongue burning hotness there was something different in that sauce. Something that I could not predict...nor I could compare the smell with any known flavouring spices.

So I asked my maid that whether she knows about this sauce or not...and she said, “I will make for you madam!!” It was really very very generous of her. She told me that the smell comes from the prawn powder...and it’s a very local thing. People use sundried shrimps to make this powder and they are available in loose sachets. You just need a little tea spoon amount of the powder and that makes all the difference. Later I bought the prawn paste also...and yes, you can use the prawn paste in place of the powder. The smell will be more or less similar. The only difference is that the prawn powder has a rustic smoky smell in it, which you cannot find in that paste. But it’s totally okay I think.

African Hot Chilli Sauce

Makes 150ml of thick sauce

Ingredients:

1 medium tomato (you can use 2 tomatoes if you don't want that much heat)

1 medium onion

12-15 green / red onions (Reduce / increase according t your heat tolerance. I have used 7-10 African chillies. African chillies are 10 times hotter than Indian chillies)

Salt

1 chicken stock cube (eliminate if you can’t find it)

2 tsp dry prawn powder (In case of unavailability use Prawn Paste, this is easily available in the Asian part of any super market.)

3-4 tbsp white oil (We need oil in large quantity since the sauce is going to be stored)

Method:

Fill half of a small saucepan with water. Put it on low flame and let it come to a boil.

Peel and halve the onion.

When the water comes to a boil put the whole tomato, halved onion and the whole chillies into the boiling water.

Put the flame on low and simmer for 10 minutes. Within this time, the skin of the tomato will loosen up and the onion and chillies will start to become soggy.

Fish the tomato, chillies and onion out of the water.

Put them in a blender and blend until smooth.

Throw away the water from the saucepan and put 2 tbsp of oil in place of that.

Heat the oil and then pour the prepared onion and tomato mixture.

Add in salt, chicken stalk cube and prawn powder.

Give a good stir to incorporate everything and simmer for more 7-10 minutes, or until the oil starts to separate.

Transfer the sauce into a bowl and let it come to room temperature.

Once it cools down, store in an airtight container and put inside the fridge.

The sauce will stay good for 2 months.