Chilli Sauces- Lasos Piman
Although there are numerous other types of chilli that have recently been introduced to the Seychelles, the two most popular ones are the bird’s eye chilli piman marten and the fiery goat chilli, piman kabri.
The Seychellois chilli sauce is never cooked. Strictly speaking, although we call it a sauce, it is closer to a vinaigrette than a sauce. It is always made fresh and consumed on the day, although it can also keep for quite a few days at room temperature or longer in the fridge. It was always prepared by using the mortar and pestle although now many households use a blender, but the end product is never the same, probably because the volatile oils in the chillies tend to dissipate by the fast action of the blades.
The Seychellois Creole cook can prepare many variations of the chilli sauce depending on how one wants to use it. All the freshly made chilli sauce, apart from being spicy, is sour, a little sweet and slightly salty- making it a really complex and versatile sauce that you can use on almost anything. The good thing is that you can adjust the amount of chilli to suit your heat level. If you are a heat seeker then double the amount of chilli.
How to Handle Chillies
If you are new to chillies, I have listed a few hints below that could assist you in managing the handling of chillies:
- What if you burn your mouth with the chilli sauce? Check the remedy here.
- I have found that if you have to preserve your chilli and want to keep its flavour, your best option is to freeze it. This will also make it easier for you to crush your chilli when the time comes. You can also dry your chilli, but you will get the heat but most of the flavour will not be there. Yes, different chillies have their own specific flavours!
- Avoid cutting chillies that have thawed out. They tend to lose their rigidity; they will be wet and very mushy. If you do , you will end up with very sore hands from the capsaicin which seem to leech out of the defrosting chilli.
- Although traditionally we always pound our chilli by using the pestle and mortar, you may find that by finely chopping your fresh chillies instead of crushing them, you end up with a very different texture and flavour.
Chilli being crushed
- Traditionally we also always add some salt to the chilli when you are crushing it using a mortar and pestle. This in fact serves two purposes. Firstly, it minimises the splashing of the chilli when it is being pounded, especially if they are ripe, and secondly the abrasive surface of the salt speeds up the crushing process.
- When working with chillies, if you have delicate skins, use kitchen gloves to avoid skin irritation. For less ‘fire’, remove the membrane and seeds from chillies.
The simplest of all chilli sauce is to crush a few chillies, add some salt and a squeeze of lemon. Other variations include mixing the following to the crushed chillies:
• vinegar , oil and salt
• chopped belenbi, salt and oil
• chopped green or red tomatoes, salt and oil, or
• you can go for a more sophisticated sauce as detailed in the recipe below:
- 10 Bird’s eye chillies
- ¼ onion, -finely diced
- ½ tomato, -finely chopped
- 4 bilenbi, -sliced (or juice of one lemon)
- 3 sprigs corriander - chopped
- ½ tsp crushed garlic
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- Pinch cracked black pepper
- 1 lemon -juiced
- Pinch salt
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Using a pestle and mortar, crush chillies with the salt.
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Add all other ingredients to the chilli into the mortar and pound roughly.
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Pour in the olive oil and lemon juice and pepper and gently mix thoroughly.
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Serve with care
Did you make this recipe?
I hope you will enjoy preparing these sauces. Please let me know how it turned out for you. If you have a different version of the recipe or have related questions, please leave your comments below.
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