The success of this sauce is in its simplicity: garlic, oil, peppers, mustard seed and a bit of patience! The scorpions slowly bring heat that keeps on building with every bite, and it will linger for a while after.
Ingredients:
- 3/4 heads of garlic, peeled
- 3/4 Trinidad Scorpion peppers roughly chopped (leave the seeds and pith for extra fun)
- 1 cup of vegetable oil (should be enough to cover the cloves in a small pan)
- 2 tsp of mustard seeds (toasted and ground, or powder)
- 1 lime
- 1 medium yellow onion cut into large chunks (optional)
- Freshly ground black pepper
Instructions:
- Arrange all the garlic in a single layer inside a small sauce pan (*)
- Pour enough oil to barely cover the cloves
- Heat on very low until it starts bubbling softly
- Let it cook for about 35 minutes
- Add the peppers (**) and onion (if using)
- Cook for 10 more minutes, the garlic should be very soft
- Let it cool for a few minutes
- Using a spoon, transfer the garlic and peppers into a blender (save the onion separately and add to taste)
- Add the mustard seed and juice of half of the lime
- Blend and taste! Add onion, black pepper and lime to taste. When tasting, let it evolve for a bit, the heat takes some time fully reach its level
- Add warm water to thin, if preferred. Use a table spoon of water at a time, the consistency can change quite quickly
(*) You can do steps 1-4 with more garlic in a larger pan, the garlic confit becomes a delicious paste that you can spread on pretty much anything.
(**) If making a bigger batch of garlic confit, you might want to separate them here, since the oil will become quite spicy from the peppers.