Recipe: Curried Papaya-Ginger Sauce

This week on the show, Jennifer Trainer Thompson teaches us how to make our own hot sauce. Thompson is the author of

Hot Sauce!: Techniques for Making Signature Hot Sauces, with 32 Recipes to Get You Started. Her book takes the reader on a hot sauce journey around the world from Asia to the Caribbean. Try her recipe for tropical

Curried Papaya Ginger Sauce for a Carribean kick.

In the audio below she talks to Evan Kleiman about tinkering with various spices, fruits, herbs and even rum in her hot sauces.

Curried Papaya Ginger Sauce

(Excerpted from Hot Sauce! (c) by Jennifer Trainer Thompson, photography (c) by Tara Donne, used with permission from Storey Publishing.)

Papaya is a natural meat tenderizer; skin an unripe green one and you’ll see the white milky liquid. When ripe, papayas lend a sweet tropical flavor and body to hot sauces, as well as an aromatic fragrance that is made all the more complex when compounded by habanero chiles.

Makes 2 to 3 cups.

6–8 fresh habanero chiles, stemmed (seeded if desired)

2 ripe papayas, peeled, seeded, and chopped

1 large yellow onion, coarsely chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped

¼ cup Mount Gay gold rum

¼ cup distilled white vinegar

1 tablespoon honey

½ teaspoon salt

Pinch of ground nutmeg

Pinch of ground cinnamon

2.Pour into a nonreactive saucepan and bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes uncovered.

3.Let cool, and then pour into bottles. If not eaten right away, the sauce will keep for 4 weeks in the refrigerator, or longer if sealed and placed on the shelf.

Curry Powder

An essential ingredient in Caribbean hot sauces, curry powder is easy to make. Dry-roasting the seeds and grinding them yourself will lead to a more aromatic sauce. Play around with what you like, adding more of this, a dash of that. Other ingredients to consider and play with are whole cloves, fennel seeds, and cinnamon sticks.

Makes ½ cup

2 tablespoons cumin seeds

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

1 tablespoon ground ginger