Piri Piri Sauce

I first had piri piri sauce on holiday in Portugal in 1982. The dish was Gambas Piri Piri - which was huge prawns in a hot tomato sauce - it was delicious and was served in a lovely earthenware dish with saute potatoes and vegetables.

I tried to recreate it at home - and found that tabasco added to tomato sauce gave me the required heat - this recipe is authentically Portuguese and uses chilli peppers.

Piri Piri
4 tbspns lemon juice
5 fl oz (125ml) olive oil
4 red chilli peppers - chopped
1 tspn salt
3 fl oz (75ml)wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic - peeled

Put all the ingredients into a food processor or blender and mix for a few seconds.

Store the sauce in a jar in the fridge for about a week to allow the flavours to amalgamate.

You then use this sauce to season your cooking.

Take a basic tomato sauce - look on the Seafood Sauce Index - and add piri piri sauce to taste - carefully! The fact that you've used whole chilli peppers - with the seeds - can make this sauce quite fierce - add a teaspoon of it and taste - you don't want to take the lining off the roof of your mouth!

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