Matt Preston's chilli sauce recipes

HERE are Matt's favourite spicy sauces, sambals and chutneys that are all as easy to make as pressing the button on your food processor.

Sambal sauce Taste

IF VEGETABLES were able to claim frequent flyer points you'd be hard pressed to know which had gained the most.

But no member of the vegetable family has had the international impact of the chilli.

Since it was first cultivated in Ecuador some 6000 years ago, its use has spread around the world from Calabria in Italy, Turkey and Hungary to the Philippines, India, China, Korea, Japan and across South East Asia to Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.

More chilli recipes

Here are my favourite spicy sauces, sambals and chutneys that are all as easy to make as pressing the button on your food processor. 

-- SAMBAL OLEK

SAMBAL olek is perhaps the most famous of the dozens of sambals to come out of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. It is apparently named after the mortar it was traditionally made in, but you don't need to develop a Wimbledon champion's right forearm to make it, unless you value the textural interest this tends to provide over the mechanical alternatives.

For the simplest sambal, blitz half a dozen raw chillies with a little caster or palm sugar, water, and a little salt and vinegar to taste. A dollop of this is delicious tossed over grilled prawns hot from the barbecue.

Most sambal oleks, however, combine a mixture of chillies, peanuts, a little vinegar and sugar, shallots, lime leaves, garlic and lemongrass.

-- INDONESIAN CHILLI SAUCE

THE Lombok version is simpler. Just mash up half a dozen fresh long, skinny red chillies that have been partially roasted to soften them, along with four similarly roasted cherry tomatoes and two minced shallots.

Add in a scrunched up, dry red chilli and a knob of grated galangal, some grated palm sugar to add sweetness (to accentuate the chilli heat) and a little prawn paste or fish sauce (about 1 tablespoon  - add it bit by bit to your taste) to add both salt and savouriness.

Cook out this paste by frying it with a little oil and then let it cool before using to slather on meat or fish.

-- JAPANESE CHILLI SAUCE

THIS idea comes from Sydney's Izakaya Fujiyama where they serve it with teriyaki beef ribs.

The sweetness of the soy-based sauce on the ribs is perfect with roasted chilli. Place two dozen whole green chillies on a smouldering barbecue and cook away gently until soft. Scrape out seeds and the stem, then blitz with a head of garlic (also roasted). Add a little oil. Serve with grilled beef.

-- VIETNAMESE &  CHINESE CHILLI SAUCES

THE Vietnamese and Chinese both have their own excellent chilli sauces with a very similar feel. The Vietnamese sauce is made with lemongrass, which makes it ideal with chicken or grilled or steamed fish and rice.

The Chinese sauce works wonderfully with steamed, grilled or roast chicken, especially when accompanied with a zippy spring onion sauce.

Make chilli jam

VIETNAMESE LEMONGRASS CHILLI SAUCE FOR FISH
Makes 1 jar
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 8 minutes
Skills needed: Basic

**

1 cup grapeseed oil
3 lemongrass stalks, white parts, finely minced
6 cloves garlic, smashed, peeled
4 spring onions, finely sliced
2 cups fresh red chillies, destemmed and deseeded
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp lime juice
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp fish sauce

**

Prep all the above ingredients and lay them out in order. This is so you can make the sauce in a quick and orderly fashion.

Heat half the oil in a large wok. Blitz the lemongrass and fry the resulting puree. While it is frying, puree the garlic and spring onions in the same blender  there's no need to clean it. Stir it into the lemongrass and reduce the heat so they simmer away gently together. Jostle the pan so they don't stick, burn or get rowdy.

Now blitz the chillies and throw them into the sauce as well. Add a splash more oil. You want to see oil on the top of the red mass.

After a couple of minutes, throw in the sugar, lime juice, salt and fish sauce. Stir. Taste and fine tune the seasoning to achieve a balance you are happy with.

Now cook out the sauce for 8 minutes. Store in a clean jar under a layer of oil.

For more cooking with chilli ideas, head to taste.com.au