The Hot Sauce Cookbook Read Online Free PDF Page B

dish. When it’s hot outside, you’ll want to make it extra spicy. It is perfect on a hot day with margaritas or micheladas . Cholula is a favorite Mexican hot sauce in Texas and in the Southwest; it is made with chile de árbol and chile pequín.
    ½ cup ketchup
    ¼ cup freshly squeezed lime juice
    About ¼ cup Cholula hot sauce or Homemade Pepper Sauce
    ¼ cup olive oil
    Pinch of salt
    Freshly ground black pepper
    ½ cup Pico de Gallo
    ½ avocado, cut into small chunks
    10 jumbo shrimp, shelled, deveined, and steamed
    2 cilantro sprigs
    Saltines, to serve
    Tortilla chips and salsa, to serve
    Combine the ketchup, lime juice, hot sauce, and olive oil and stir. Add the salt, pepper, pico de gallo, the avocado, and the shrimp. Stir gently to combine. Spoon into two chilled cocktail glasses or beer schooners. Garnish with the cilantro sprigs. Serve with saltines, tortilla chips, and salsa.

MICHELADA
    ——— Makes 1 ———
    Michelada means “my cold beer” in Spanish. It’s a cold beer with hot sauce in the mug and salt on the rim. The chile de árbol flavor of Cholula is a favorite for this.
    ½ lime
    Coarse sea salt
    2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
    1 teaspoon Cholula hot sauce or Homemade Pepper Sauce
    1 (12-ounce) bottle Dos Equis Lager, Corona, or other Mexican beer
    Salt the rim of a chilled beer mug by rubbing it with the lime and dipping it in the coarse salt. Squeeze the lime into the mug. Add the Worcestershire and Cholula hot sauce. Pour in the beer and serve.
    Los Big Shots: La Fisheria, a Mexican seafood restaurant in Houston, serves “Los Big Shot,” a beery version of the Mexican seafood cocktail. To make one at home, mix up a michelada and then stir six boiled shrimp and/or raw oysters into it. First you eat the spicy shrimp with a spoon and then you drink the seafood and hot sauce–flavored beer.

SIKIL PAK
    ——— Makes about 3 cups ———
    In the Mayan language, sikil mean “tomato” and pak means “pumpkin seed.” This addictively delicious dip explains a lot about the Mesoamerican agricultural trinity of squash, corn, and beans. While the corn and beans always made sense, I could never figure out why squash was such a big deal. You don’t see a lot of people eating squash in Mexican restaurants these days.    +   Eventually, I learned that it wasn’t the squash itself that was valued so highly, it was the seed. The green inner kernel of the squash or pumpkin seed is high in nutritious oils and tastes wonderful when roasted and ground. The mole sauce called pipian is one illustration of how the seeds can be used—sikil pak is another.    +   The satisfying density of the dip might remind you of a pumpkin seed hummus. You can make it in a blender, but you may need to add some water to get the blades going. The old-fashioned way to make it is to roast the pumpkin seeds and tomatillos and grind them with the chile and garlic into a fine paste in a molcajete ; a lot of people insist the texture of sikil pak made in a molcajete is unbeatable.      + Personally, I prefer the ease of a heavy-duty high-speed blender (such as a Vitamix or Blendtech). You just dump everything in the jar, hit the accelerator, and whiz the whole thing into a paste.
    2 cups (8 ounces) hulled pumpkin seeds (the green inner part)
    4 tomatillos
    1 clove garlic
    1 to 2 habanero-type chiles, stemmed and halved
    ¼ cup olive oil
    ¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
    Water
    A few whole pumpkin seeds, for garnish
    Tortilla chips or crackers, to serve
    In a large frying pan over high heat, dry roast the pumpkin seeds until they begin to pop, shaking and turning frequently, about 5 minutes. Transfer the roasted seeds to a bowl to cool.
    Husk the tomatillos, rinse them well, put them in the hot frying pan along with the garlic, and roast for a few minutes or until the tomatillos and garlic are lightly charred.
    Combine the roasted seeds, tomatillos, garlic, chiles, olive oil, and lemon juice in a molcajete, adding