The two chilli plants on the stoep are decoratively hung with little bell shaped yellow/orange chillies- they are distracting me, I can hear them shouting ..'pick me- pick me!' whenever I pass them by.
Saturday night was the ideal time to test our pretty little chillies, the art teachers has a delicious signature dish- piri piri chicken livers.
The recipe comes from one of his favourite books 'piri piri starfish' by Tessa Kiros, he keeps it safely hidden from my grubby cook hands- understandably.......you should see the state of my cookbooks!
I also confess to being a bit of a cowboy cook- I 'gooi' (throw), never measure and frequently take short cuts, whereas the art teacher is methodical and careful, which is why his chicken livers are so delicious.
Her recipe for Piri Piri sauce- 1 cup olive oil, 3 ripe tomatoes, 50 g butter, 1/2 tsp salt, pinch of sugar, 6 piri piri chillies, (hard to find here, we use what we can get) 4 cloves of garlic.
Heat the oil, add tomatoes and butter- simmer for 25 mins. Add salt, sugar, chillies & garlic, cook for 5 - 10 mins. Remove from heat and puree.
For the chicken livers- take 2 Tbsp butter heat until golden, add 1 tsp oregano, saute for 1 minute, add chicken livers, fry until crusty and golden- turning gently, add salt and pepper, pour over juice of 1 lemon, add your piri piri sauce, some fresh greens from the garden and a few slices of toasted ciabatta
Perfect on a chilly Saturday night- add a good DVD and a few glasses of red wine.
.We used the leftover piri piri sauce on Sunday- I rubbed it all over the free range chicken and it roasted happily will some cherry tomatoes and onion wedges until crispy and fall- apart tender.
Fuh - aaaablous!
ReplyDeleteThat is SO South African...the sauce looks divine.
That may be dinner, tonight, in Brooklyn.
En wat op dees aarde is piri piri chiles? I have always thought that 'piri piri' was a Portuguese variation or corruption of berbere which is an Eritrean and Ethiopean spice mix of sundried, ground chiles and other spices (I waitressed in an Eritrean restaurant for a couple of years and the owner smokkled the spice in every year). But you say it is an actual type of pepper?
I know! According to Tessa Kiros's book its an actual type of chilli, this news had poor Fanie searching high and low with no success- eventually we pleaded with a good friend on her way to Portugal to find some,lovely lady came back with 2 jars of preserved chopped piri piri chilli, the one I have left is preserved in aquardent??...(some kind of spanish alcohol I think) - very tasty as well as quite hot, but we'd love to smokkel a real piri piri chilli to grow from seeds....anybody going that way?
ReplyDeletePS- Enjoy dinner.....the price of meat has just gone through the roof here- loin chops R120 per kilo at P'nP, leg of lamb R100 p/kg- I think the farmers have left??!!!- so when I saw the free range chicken livers at only R15 per punnet- it made me very happy!
ReplyDeleteUpdate......F just sent me this link x
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_piri
Jirre kriek, the lamb price, that's getting up there and beyond with New York lamb prices, which also just went sky high...Terrible!
ReplyDeleteOK - off to look at the link. It's tonight's supper, now; last night we had...something else. Starts with a p and ends with an a and has some z's in the middle...