Not another chilli sauce, surely?

Yes. Indeed. My love of chillis knows no bounds, and I just picked the last peppers of the season. (In case anyone was wondering, a "peck" is a quarter of a bushel; considerably more than the quantity I picked. Oh. A bushel is 8 Gallons.)
Last night I was round at our friends, N&S, watching the All Blacks beat Wales, and snacking all the while on antipasti. It was delicious. One of the little dishes was a homemade chilli pickle, made with some Scotch Bonnet peppers that S had grown. These peppers, traditionally, are very hot, but these provided more of a "Russian roulette" approach to the proceedings, with the occasional one being a sudden blast of fire, the others being tasty, but no hotter than, say, a glass of water.

So I was inspired. I took our remaining chillis (about 300 birds-eye Thai chillis, and another 40 slightly under-ripe Habaneros)

not quite a peck of peppers, shortly to be pickled.

 and am currently stewing them whole in wine, cider vinegar, fish sauce, soy sauce and lime juice. I've put a handful of garlic cloves in there too, and some lime zest, and I'll simmer them all until the garlic and chilli is soft. The smell is acrid and pungent, somewhere between a delicious pickle and an industrial accident.

do not inhale directly. If swallowed, seek medical attention.

Once they are stewed, I'll have to decide what's next; do I strain them through the mouli to make a smooth paste, or do I bottle them crushed but whole, seeds and all, for a mouth-burning pickle? If I leave the seeds in, I'm sure the heat will persist all the way down the digestive tract; I suspect I'll sieve them out.

Normally, I'd try to keep the cooking time to a minimum; the longer the cooking the milder the sauce becomes. But this time, I think I can go for a long cook, as the heat and pungency are at an all time high with this combination. And I already have some really hot sauce.

Decision time (the next day...)
I took out some of the softened whole Thai chillis, de-seeded them, chopped them up and returned them to the strained sauce to add a little texture. The result? This is probably the most pungent, and fieriest sauce I've made so far. I gave LW an old pole I rescued from a nearby barge, and she refused to touch the jars with it. So it is hot. I think it might make an excellent ingredient; it's been cooked so much that I could add it to a mild curry to make a hot one at the table. That sort of thing.

2 jars. With chilli sauce inside. Or is it jam...?

experimental chilli sauce

I've had an excellent crop of chillis this year, thanks to a long dry summer and an excellent and diligent LW who does the bulk of the gardening.

Thai Chillis in profusion

Hungarian Bananas

The peppers ready for the pot.

The chillis we've harvested have been Cayenne, earlier on, and now, Habaneros, Thai bird's-eye, and Hungarian bananas. Each of them has their own wonderful attributes; I'm particularly fond of the Habaneros; they are fiery hot, but with a sweet tropical fruit base that makes them quite addictive.

Because the crop has been so prolific this year, I've been able to experiment a little with different sauces. Some have been a disaster; I made one sauce that combined chillis and tomatoes, but exploded out of the bottles despite rigorous sterilisation of the glass and the sauce. Some have been superb (even though I say it myself), my criteria being taste (of course) heat, and the propensity for the sauce to NOT create the classic "ring of fire" the next day. I've never been a fan of sauces with intimidating and "humourous" names and a reputation for indigestibility.

So, today I wanted to create a sauce with a bit of a twist; and it's sitting, stewing in it's own juices as I write this. Time will tell if it's a success, but I fear it won't be. I've tried to go for a more South-East Asian taste, using Belacan (dried shrimp paste), and Tamarind for sourness, but I also went all fusion mad, and infused the chillis in Gin, Mirin and cider vinegar. There's mustard seeds, for a different kind of heat, and anchovy paste (I really wanted to add Ikan Bilis, but couldn't find any- Kerikeri had a very short-lived Asian supermarket, now it's gone!) for a sambal sort of slant.

So, the starting ingredients may well have been wasted which is a shame, but I will let you know how it comes out. Even if it's a total disaster, I'll have had fun concocting it; it reminds me of my nerdy childhood with a chemistry set in the garage at home (do they still sell those?).

When I do get some dried anchovies, I think I'll stick to a well-tried sambal recipe.

So. The sauce tasted odd, but not irredeemable; it just lacked a certain something. Could it be sharpness? I added some lime juice and it was much more pleasant. So I bottled it. Look how much I made:

Ta-da!