For those who weren’t at the Fiery Foods Festival at the North Market in Columbus, which is most of you, John and Steve had a throwdown of sorts. Both were given ingredients to make an icebox hot sauce. Each person got some radically different ingredients; John more toward the savory and Steve more toward the sweet/hot. Oddly, I would have guessed Steve’s to be more tasty, but John’s came out to be uber amazing. It was so amazing that I snagged some before leaving the show. Heh…John didn’t know that until a couple of weeks later when I called him to ask if he could remember the ingredients because I wanted to duplicate it. Well, I started off with some basic ingredients from the original recipe, but ended up with my own slant to it at the end.

Here are the peppers I started with.

To that, I added water, vinegar, 1 clove elephant garlic, 3 tomatillos, 3 dried chipotles, and salt. Don’t ask me the amount of water, vinegar and salt. I just added until it tasted good. It came out fantastic!

I never really wanted it to be a sauce. I wanted it more the texture of a thin salsa. That’s what I got. In fact, Joe calls it icebox salsa, despite the fact it doesn’t have a single tomato. Here is the result.

Now, if you WERE at the Fiery Foods Festival, you realize this looks NOTHING like John’s. That’s because I added more chipotle. Why? Well, I added one and it tasted better. So, I added another. That tasted good so I thought I’d go for a third. It just worked.

I found out in the end that I didn’t need an exact replica. I just needed something great and fresh to have around the house. I think both Joe and I have agreed that it’s good to have something like this around all the time. Trust me, this isn’t the first time I’m going to make this. I’m definitely on a flavor roll.

It’s time to make more. Do YOU have any suggestions?

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