Do you like your friendships bland or spicy….?
Are your friends fierce when they need to be? Do they call you out when you aren’t the biggest person you can be? Or do they not seem to notice either way. This is a post about hot sauce and warm friendships, and yes the two things are linked. At least in my posts, they are.
I like my friendships to have a little kick to them. So if I head off on the wrong track, they will give me a gentle, or more forceful, foot in my backside to get me back on the right course again. Delivered with love, of course.
I need fierce friends to tell me when I’m judgmental or not taking responsibility for my part in a mess. Friends who notice if I’m in a good place or a wrong place and work through the barriers I put up to find out why.
If you don’t have those friends in your life, or relationships, in general, are lacking (or just not there at all), it’s probably time to step back and do an audit of your life. How balanced are you right now? What values are driving your day to day behaviours? Are they the ones you want? Where are you focusing your energy, and is that serving you?
Friendships need to be a little spicy. Not so hot, they cause permanent burns. But also not so bland or even draining that you avoid having them. (Nobody wants a friendship that feels like a restaurant meal made by someone who doesn’t want to be there and which left you feeling angry, ripped off and hungry!)
If you want help auditing where your relationships are at, contact me for a one to one mentoring programme. Or, if you’re going to get straight to the hot sauces, read on.
This red hot sauce is a lot like friendships should be: deep, rich, a little fierce when needed, work well in a diverse range of contexts and doesn’t leave you burnt or wanting more!
Ingredients
- 500 gms (just over a pound) red chillis deseeded and roughly chopped
- 150 mls (0.3 pint) malt vinegar
- 200 mls (around 1/2 pint) water
- 10 gloves garlic
- 1 tbsp salt
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 star anise
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 cardamon pods
- 1 stick of cinnamon
So here’s what you do
- Sterilise your bottles or jars. Clean them with hot soapy water, rinse and put in a warm oven (120 C/248 F). Clean the lids with spirits, the liquid kind. For more about sterilising take a look at this post on jam making.
2. Deseed and roughly chop the chillis. As a side note, seeds don’t hold the heat; it’s the fleshy pith and connective membrane that generates capsaicin, the compound that makes our eyes water. Here’s an excellent article about that by Kendra Pierre-Louis in The Atlantic Magazine (March 12, 2016). We remove the seeds because they come with the pitch – and they stick in teeth. It’s not critical to get all of them out but if you want to give it a good try, make sure to wear gloves and glasses (to stop you accidentally touching your eyes).
3. Blitz the water, garlic cloves and vinegar in a processor, then put it into a pot. Tie the star anise, cardamom, cinnamon and bay leaves in a muslin cloth. Add in the sugar and salt.
4. Cook until reduced, and then bottle that hot goodness right up.
You can add the sauce to lots of recipes. I don’t tend to use it straight on food. I’m not brave enough. It’s good to have fierce friends but maybe when you need them – in small doses:-)