South African Peri-Peri Sauce Recipe

Peri-Peri Chicken, Miele Pap and Monkey Gland Sauce from the South African Food and Wine Fest

Ok, food people. If you're anywhere near Virginia next September, you must be sure to hit the South African Food and Wine Festival at Grayhaven Winery. Not only is it an excellent introduction to South African cuisine cooked by those who know it well (the winery owners are from Cape Town), but it's a heck of a great way to spend an early fall afternoon drinking lovely Virginia wines while getting your spicy food fix on.

South African cuisine is incredibly diverse and ranges from Indian-style curries and English fish and chips to Dutch Boerewor sausages and world renown South African wines from vineyards originally planted by the French. It's a melting pot cuisine that is heavily spiced, hearty and soul satisfying.

Just a few of the goodies you can try at the festival.

Sure, I might be jumping the gun here since the festival is a cool 10 months away, but in the meantime, why not try your hand at making a classic South African Peri-Peri marinade? It goes equally well on chicken or shrimp, and it's sure to warm you from the inside-out since it's loaded with hot peppers.

Grilled Peri-Peri Chicken

Peri-Peri sauce (or Piri-Piri) is traditionally made with African bird's eye chili's, which are quite similar to a Thai red chili. These chili's rank high on the Scoville heat scale at 175,000 units (a jalapeno is about 4500 units) so this is one pepper that's not for the faint of heart. Use of this type of chili is integral to recreating authentic South African food, so if you can't find African piri-piri peppers, head to your local Asian grocery and get a bag of Thai birds and be generous with them. There's supposed to be a lot of heat!

Traditionally, this sauce, which is also heavy on the acids (vinegar and lime juice) is not only used to marinade meats, but often doubles as a dipping sauce or is served alongside delicious fried goodies like Fish with Slap Chips (a.k.a. fish 'n chips):

Peri-Peri sauce can also be served alongside grilled lamb:

Peri-Peri is also great on a Boerewors sausage sandwich:

Use this sauce to marinade fish, shrimp, game meats or add it into a dip, sprinkle it over collard greens. It's meant to be versatile, so use your imagination.

South African Peri-Peri Sauce
Makes about 2 1/2 cups

Don't forget to wear gloves when working with these chili's and be sure not to touch your face. Ouch!

Ingredients:

1 cup olive oil
10 fresh red chili peppers (such as birds-eye chili’s) – cleaned and chopped
1 large onion, minced
Juice of 4 fresh limes
1 entire bulb of garlic – shelled and chopped fine
1 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley – chopped
1 cup white wine vinegar
2 Tablespoons kosher salt
4 Tablespoons sweet paprika

Mix all the ingredients in a large glass bowl. Whisk for 2 minutes. Store, covered in the refrigerator for two days or at least 24 hours to let the flavors release. Once aged, remove ¼ of the marinade and set aside to use as a dipping sauce.  For chicken, marinate up to 24 hours.  For shrimp, marinate up to 30 minutes.

This recipe was generously donated by Max Peple-Abrams of Grayhaven Winery.

©2011 Fatback and Foie Gras. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission

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Barbados Food & Wine and Rum Festival 2011

Bajan-style pork and potato roti

In less than a week, the 2011 Barbados Food & Wine and Rum Festival will be taking place November 18-21, and just like last year, there's a stellar line-up of chefs, seminars, cooking demo's, and of course, plenty of great Bajan food and local rum. Chefs Tom Colicchio, Ming Tsai and Marcus Samuelsson will once again make appearances alongside local Barbadian favorite "The Rhum Chef" Paul Yellin, London chef Bruno Loubet, Vitor Gomes (Brazil), Mark McEwin and Tom Brodi (Canada), Food & Wine wine expert Anthony Giglio, and a whole host of other local Bajan chefs. And, the best part? It's not too late to buy tickets as there are still some left.

If this year's event is anything like the 2010 Food and Wine and Rum Fest it's going to be quite the party. Hosted again by Travel & Leisure mags Features Director, Nilou Motamed, the festival will again present an array of a la carte activities including a bevy of up-close-and-personal celebrity chef cooking demo's, rum tours, authentic Bajan-style lunch fiestas (see above photo), even a half day food and rum cruise hosted by Canadian Chef Tom Brodi. Other highlights include Ambrosia II, an all-you-can-savor evening extravaganza featuring food, wine and rum samplings from all of the event's guest chefs followed by the highly anticipated after party, Super Sonic, to be held at the museum home of the British Airways Concorde "Alpha Echo" where the original tarmac will be transformed into an all-night party complete with live DJ's food and drink.

The Bajan gods have shined on me again this year, and I will be returning to the Barbados food and rum fest to savor as much as humanly possible without blowing up my liver, so keep an eye out for future blog posts and Twitter updates and be sure to follow my onsite coverage of the event over at Food Republic. In the meantime, here's a little taste from last year's four day party.

Chef Marcus Samuelsson serves up his take on shrimp and red grits

Chef Ming Tsai's soba noodle sushi w/ tea smoked salmon

The national dish of Barbados: flying fish sandwich

Second national dish of Barbados: flying fish cakes

One of many "cutter" stands selling salt bread fish sandwiches

Bajan brunch: flying fish, stuffed pork, macaroni pie

What the heck! Come spend Thanksgiving week in Barbados. I'll be there.

©2011 Fatback and Foie Gras. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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2011 Hanover County Firefighters Crab Feast

What do you get when you bring together all-you-can-drink Bud Light, classic rock cover bands and more steamed blue crabs than you can count? A full blown party, that's what.

I happened to win tickets to this crabby party from Sports Radio 910 (and I never win anything) so we simply had to go. Plus, I love picking whole blue crabs more than I can express in words, but the short of it is, the mere act of prying out tiny morsels of sweet crab meat literally involves hours of eating and drinking, and I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday.

On advice from others, we got there just after the gates opened, so it was quiet, but the deal is this. Gates open at 1:30 for hot dogs and beer, and the crabs don't start arriving en masse until 2pm where you can eat yourself silly until 6pm sharp. For $30 per person it's a bargain all-you-can-eat affair with diners scoring table spots (or reserving tents) early. There are no tickets sold at the gate in order to make sure there's enough vittles for everyone, which was a great way to ensure everyone got their fare share of crabs. Since we got there right when this shindig opened, we figured we'd grab a beer, take a seat and then patiently wait, mallets in hand, for piles of steamy crabs to land in our laps.

WRONG.

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