The ChileFoundry » Hot Juan

Hot Juan’s – Lemon ‘n Lime Fire Chutney

Hot Juan — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:24:36 +0000

I wrote this recipe down originally for a book, published many years ago “The Hot Book of Chillies“. I am not sure I have ever made it the same way twice, but a few weeks ago I came across a jar from the batch I made back then, and wow does it taste good. I cannot recommend you keep yours so long, this jar dates back to 2005, but it just shows how well things mature.

Lemon 'n Lime Fire Chutney

Yield: About 1.5L (3 Pints of Chutney)

Ingredients

6 Limes
2 Large Lemons
500 g Onions
50 g Salt
500 g Sugar
700 ml Vinegar
2 tsp Mustard Seeds
2 tsp Paprika
2 tsp Ground Cumin
1 tsp Ground Turmeric
10 Hot Thai Chillies (finely chopped)
200 g Raisins

Cooking Directions

Place the Limes and Lemons in a pan and cover with water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 2-3 minutes, then leave to stand until cool enough to handle.
Cut the fruit into halves and squeeze the juice into a bowl, removing the seeds.
Chop the remaining skin and pulp onto small pieces with scissors or a sharp knife, mix in the onions ans sprinkle with salt.
In a latge pan bring the vinegar and sugar to the boil and simmer until all the sugar has dissolved. Add the chopped lime, lemon and onion mixture as well as all the dry spices, raisins and chillies, mix well and simmer for 2-3 hours stirring frequently until the mixture has reduced by about 50%.
Pour into sterilized jars and seal while still hot.
Your chutney will be ready to eat within 3-4 weeks.

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We visit the Sea Spring Seeds Open Day 2011

Hot Juan — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:43:27 +0000

Lyme View home of Sea Spring Seeds

As we arrived at Lyme View the home of Sea Spring Seeds the sun was out, a big change from last year when we ran between poly tunnels following Joy as she escorted visitors around describing the chillies and the methods they use to grow them so successfully.

Joy and Michael could not make you more welcome, this is not like visiting any other event we go to, but much more a trip to see how some real enthusiasts grow and develop chillies. Famed as the home of the Dorset Naga, but what you find as you wander about is that they are growing all sorts of other unusual and interesting varieties (many of which may make it in to their seed catalogue in the next few years).

New Chilli - Hot Juan

As we arrived Michael took us on a trip around some of the closed off green houses to see some of the new chillies they had collected many of which has been sent by other enthusiasts from around the world.

In one poly tunnel he introduced us to a chilli he had called “Hot Juan”, I suspect named as it was a plump, large and warm chilli, we hope to get some seeds for this one when it is ready for one of our competitions.

We had a great visit, and came away with a few fresh chillies that I will be cooking with in the next couple of days.

Below you will find some picture taken during our visit, do take a look at their web site www.seaspringseeds.co.uk where you can order seeds and we recommend you get on one of their courses on growing Chillies and Peppers, Joy and Michael and a great source of knowledge that you only get from years of growing experience.

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Scott Roberts – What’s Your Top 10 Favorite Hot Sauces?

Hot Juan — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:45:48 +0000

Scott Roberts Top 10 Hot Sauces

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by fellow hot sauce aficionado Scott Roberts to create a list of my top 10 favourite sauces, this was not an easy task, over the past few years I have tasted 100′s of sauces, many of which did not last long, lucky I reviewed most of them, so I could look at my tasting notes and see what was exceptional.

Scott asked that I did not try to rate them as a 1-10 listing, if he had it would have taken me weeks to decide, as it was I spent many hours adding product to the list and then changing my mind soon I had about 25 sauces in the list, then I had to select the 10…. well I am sorry if I left out some excellent sauces, but reducing 100′s to just 10 is nearly impossible, but here is my list.

If you would like to see what others said was their top 10, you can read the full article on Scotts web site www.scottrobertsweb.com

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Hot Juan goes to Frome and the The Wessex Chilli Festival

Hot Juan — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 08:38:07 +0000

A quick trip out the Frome yesterday for the Wessex Chilli Festival, which is the hard work of Matt from Simpson’s Seeds, now in it’s second year, the event have grown, with a good selection of suppliers and products for everyone.

Chilli Sauce Competition

Two new innovative ideas this year, a Chilli Sauce Competition that visitors got to vote on which sauces they liked best and a chance to name a new variety of Chilli. On entry to the event you are give a small coloured bead, which you can use to vote for your favourite sauce on a blind tasting table, the sauces are each in a bowl with a small plastic cup behind them that is used to collect the votes (Beads), next to each sauce is a list of ingredients, but no name, and you get to taste each sauce with a wooden coffee stirrer (The kind of thing you find in Starbucks). We home to let you know which sauce
was the winner as soon as it is announced.

My daughter and I had a couple of attempts to provide a name for the new Chilli variety, she went with “Aji Mary” as that is her name (she is almost 4) and I very unimaginatively went for Aji Lemon Pop.

We did get to try some great new sauces from Upton Cheyney Chilli Company, more on then very soon as we have bottles to review, and we also hope to do a write up on Jethro’s, who seem to have been around forever, but are still very active at events and shows support the independent retailers.

I was also very impressed with the range from the Dartmoor Chilli Farm, the quality of their range is always high, but I did not know they had such a wide range of products.

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Meet Your Maker – Hot-Headz

Darth Naga — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:57:21 +0000

Right! time for me to introduce a NEW feature here at the Chilefoundry! This is an idea myself and Hot Juan have had for some time, but last week was the first proper chance we got to actually implement it, the idea we had was for a series of featurettes based on different chilli and hotsauce manufacturers and distributors based in the UK and we shall visit these people and then make a short documentary type video on each one!

I decided to call it “Meet your maker” as i felt that was title that best fits the series!

The original idea was to do one long video and go from there, BUT due to Youtube restraints we can only upload it in 10 min chunks, which as it turns out is a good idea as now you can choose the content you want to see!

So the day started off with me standing outside Hot-Headz HQ on a blazing hot summer day in Stroud knocking on the door, luckily for me Stuart was in work that day and not off attending one of the many meetings he has, busy man is Stu!! Stuart invited me inside and then proceeded to give me a little history on Hot-Headz and how the name became famous! If you wanna know a little more about the Company and the people behind it then watch this intro!

After that little bit of history Stuart went on to give me a little tour of one of the Hot-Headz warehouses, and we came across a few sauces that caught my eye, me being the curious (Nosey) type i decided this was a prime opportunity to dig into Stuarts vast knowledge of Hotsauces and who makes them.

And then came my favourite part of the trip…Stuart invited me to see the one room that not alot of people get to see, his own personal sauce collection or the “Hot room” as he calls it!
This is TRULY a site to behold, its a sauce collectors dream and i felt truly priviledged that Stu allowed us to film inside the room!

So there you have it, the ins and out of Hot-Headz HQ and the people behind it all, Even though the last video says it all i just want to thank Stuart McAllister for letting us film inside his headquarters, Hot Juan for doing all the driving and making this visit possible and Mrs Naga for filming it all for us! As a rare treat i will sign off with a little tasting video we did at Hot-Headz HQ where Stuart himself actually joined us and gave his views on a couple of sauces, so check this vid out and see just what the Godfather of the UK hotsauce movement has to say! Till next time chilefanz, may the sauce be with you!

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Our 500th Article Celebrations – Win a Super Hot Hamper!

Hot Juan — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:50:09 +0000

500 Hot Articles

Darth Naga and I (Hot Juan) have now published 500th articles since we stared just over a year ago, this is a big landmark for us, our target was to publish one article per day, and we have exceeded our target.

We would like to thanks all our contributors including Scott Roberts, Joe Bishop, Peter Seymour, Chris Jagger and Steve Walters who have helped with articles.

*** WIN A HAMPER ***

As part of our 500th article celebration we are giving away a hamper full of chilli products from our favourite suppliers.

To win this hamper all you need to do is use our “Contact Us” form to sent us a message with the subject “Win a Hamper”, at the end of the month we will put all the entries in a box and pull out a winner.

Note: We will only ship this to a UK address

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Fiery Foods Festival Show Report (Easter 2010)

Hot Juan — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:31:28 +0000

TristamChilli

This is my first visit to a Fiery Food’s Festival, and I was impressed by the first chilli event of the year, it is not a large event like West Dean Chilli Fiesta, but it is very well organised with enough to delight the visitor. There were lots of chilli products to taste, great food to eat, and even a tent with children’s entertainment and a live band.

Darth and Mrs Naga worked with TristamChilli on one of the stands organising tastings, Tristam was an event on his own, please ask him to do this seagull impression, it is well worth it!

The event was a great mix of food stand and chilli sauce providers including:-

Thrilli Foods

Spicy Monkey – Who has a very impressive range of sauces and spice mixes, we have some to review, so you will know out verdict on these, but our initial tastes and repeated visit to their stand was ago indication of the quality of the products.

Thrilli Foods – Who’s amazing Green Chilli Pickle was backed up by some other equally good sauces and chutneys

David’s Chilli Oil – A very popular product this range of oils, and a unique flavour, ideal of drizzling on salads, using in a stir fry, or just marinating meat before grilling or BBQ’s.

Fiery Foods – A massive range of imported and UK produced sauces from there ship in the Brighton Marina, with tastings and advice from Darth Naga and TristamChilli.

Fiery Foods

ChilliPepperPete – Pete’s range is ever increasing with even more quality products from their own kitchen.

Fallen Angel MicroBrewery have been making Chilli beer for years and it shows in the well balanced taste of there brews, these are not beers with a bit of chilli added after brewing, but the chilli is an integral part of the process. But more of this later, we did get a few bottles to try.

Jethro’s – provided samples of their marinades, vinaigrettes, sauces and dips we loved the Green Chilli and Coriander sauce, we hope to get some of these to review in the next few months.

We visited the show of all three days and tried to eat at all of the food stands over, my family loved each one we tried, but my favourite was the pulled pork from the BBQ Shack, it reminded me of my visits to the USA, and has inspired me to fire up my Cactus Jack offset wood BBQ and to try to perfect my own real BBQ.

deli welli doo daaa

I have sold Chilli Ice-cream at events, but “deli welli doo daaa” had make a Naga Ice-cream that was about as hot as I have ever tasted, and very creamy being produced to order from an whippy style ice-cream machine, they also sold some very tasty chilli cupcakes.

Part of my visit was to act as a Judge at the first round of the National Chilli Awards, ChilliPepperPete, Darth Naga and myself tasted and rated a table full of sauces, Jam, Pickles and chutneys, we has to find the best in three categories Taste, Heat and Presentation and then a final Overall Winner.

The competitors had gone to some length to create these sauces, the winner of the Heat category had used vodka to make his own Bhut Jolokia Oleoresin the sauce being which as aptly name “The Evil One”

There was a big debate over who would win the taste award with two sauces “Destroy All Monsters!” and “Lilly’s Lime Ginger and Chilli Jelly” making it hard to pick a final winner, but after many re-tastes and discussion the winner was “Lilly’s Lime Ginger and Chilli Jelly”

After just missing out on the taste award, “Destroy All Monsters!” was a clear winner in the presentation category.

National Chilli Awards

The Overall Winner of the first round of the national Chilli Awards went to “The Evil One” it was a major achievement to make a superhot sauce at home with such a good flavour and consistency, the choice was unanimous.

During the tasting we were filmed by a Public TV channel from Korea, so if you see me on Korean TV let me know.

Chilli Eating Competition Winner

At the end of each day there was a chilli eating contest, we stayed for the last one on the Sunday and this was likely to be the biggest and the BBC had entered Michael Mosley as part of a new series to be call “Pleasure and Pain”. Darth worked hard passing out the chillies and the sauces to be tasted, Michael was the first to drop out, and then after a few more rounds of hotter and hotter chillies there were just six competitors. Who then had to eat ChilliPepperPete’s Naga’s followed by Satan’s Shit Hot Sauce, then they combined them, and soon there were just 2 contestants left.

The competition had never got this far before without finding a winner, so out same a small bottle of SubLime a 3 Million SHU extract, this was first offered on a cocktail stick, but the last two competitor were still hanging on, a teaspoon of SubLime finally finished the event with the winner beaming and still seemingly unaffected by her trail by heat.

You can see more images from the event here

We had a great time and will not miss the next Fiery Foods Festival in Brighton on the 18th and 19th of September.