Sweet Chilli Sauce/Dressing

Everyone knows sweet chilli sauce. (At least everyone who has been to an Asian themed restaurant) Yes that is that sweet, red, runny and damn spicy stuff you dip your deep fried prawns or chicken pieces or tempura veggies or spring rolls or whatever in depending on the authenticity of the restaurant. You might also have a bottle sitting in your fridge. However often that bottle sits there for ages and goes off after being used for just a few times simply because you do not eat Asian every day, at least that was the destiny of my last commercially made bottle from the Thai aisle in the supermarket.

So what exactly is sweet chilli sauce? Essentially it is red chillies, garlic, white vinegar and loads of sugar all boiled together to form a thick still runny sauce. Cheapies are thickened with starch or some creepy E's. More sophisticated recipes call for adding lemongrass, galangal and other exotic spices that are virtually impossible to get, at least for the mortal people like me. (I have never seen galangal in my life, lemongrass can be found in Stockmann from time to time, but is bloody expensive)

I really like the flavor of this sauce, but the supermarket ones are a far cry from perfect, and cooking a large amount at home is a hassle, so I invented a dressing rather similar to this traditional sauce that requires no cooking and can be made in small amounts for single or a few days use.

Sweet Chilli Dressing

You will need a pestle and mortar for this recipe. I will give the minimum amounts of ingredients that still work, multiply them as many times as you wish but remember- taste degrades while storing, do not store for longer than 2-3 days

Ingredients

• 2 long red chillies
• one large or 2 small cloves of garlic
• 2 slightly heaped teaspoons of sugar
• 1.5 tablespoons of white (rice, wine, champagne or similar) vinegar
• 2 tablespoons of mildly flavored (grapeseed, rice bran, canola) oil
• salt
  

Take seeds out of chillies and slice them finely. Slice garlic the same way. Put vegetables in the mortar together with sugar and pound vigorously until the mixture is as smooth as possible, there are just a few pieces of skin ant fibers visible. Add the vinegar and give it a good stir.
From this point on you can choose two paths. You can just add the oil, whisk the dressing until there ate no droplets of oil visible, season with salt to taste and serve it straight away or you can to it the fancy way. Take a reasonably fine sieve and pour the veggie-vinegar mixture in it. Push as much of it through sieve with the back of a spoon as you can, use the remains to flavor a stew, a curry, a soup or simply discard them and mix the liquid with oil and salt to form a clear, bright orange and very stylish dressing.

This can be drizzled over almost everything and works well as a salad dressing or dipping sauce too. Enjoy!