Chili Peppers and Garlic Paste

This chili peppers, garlic and parsley paste I made by an accident. I bought red sweet chili peppers to make a meal and discovered that they were quite hot chili peppers and were not suitable for stuffing. I decided to mix them with the garlic I had at home, and parsley from the garden, put the mixture in the fridge and use it as a spice mix when cooking casseroles and meatballs. I put deseeded peppers, peeled garlic, parsley, salt, ground black pepper and one tea spoon of cold pressed olive oil in food processor and made a coarse paste. The paste was so delicious that we finished the jar in three days using the it fresh with our omelettes, cold cuts, steamed fish, prawns and cooked in soups. I started to make this paste every week and discovered that long red chili peppers vary in taste and can be sweet as red capsicum, mildly hot or extremely hot. It made this recipe very flexible. The heat, if necessary can be added by dry chillies, or reduced by adding red capsicum to the mix. At first I added salt to my taste, now I add half a table spoon for every cup of final product. The paste is ready to use instantly, but fermentation process will start even if you keep it in the fridge. As time goes by it will result in reduction of heat and saltiness in the paste. The taste will slightly change, but the paste will stay delicious anyway.

Ingredients:

•  7 hot deseeded chili peppers
•  1 head of garlic
•  1 red capsicum
• bunch of flat parsley
• 1,5 tablespoons of sea salt
•  1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper
•  1 teaspoon of organic cold pressed olive oil.

Preparation:

• Put all ingredients into food processor and make a coarse paste (step by step instructions here)

I like the flexibility of this recipe, you can make the paste as hot, or as mild as you want. It saves you time when added as a spice mix to meals when you cook them and it is very nice fresh. The only thing I want to add, I really do not like garlic, never added in anything fresh and avoided to add it when cooking. It was a miracle that I had a head of garlic in the house that day. Now I eat this paste by the spoonful, have no adverse effects after that and the only problem to discover the taste of fully fermented product is that it never survives that long in our household.

Very important note: Be careful when deseed chili peppers, thoroughly wash your hands or use gloves. Chillies can burn your fingers and it is a nasty surprise to deal with.