Hot, hot HEAT
Diana Kuan offers an education in fiery and flavourful homemade Asian chili sauces
Chili sauces have never been hotter, both literally and figuratively. Concoctions made with the world’s fieriest pepper – the scorching Carolina Reaper – have become the stuff of challenges, and more people are biting than ever before. According to Euromonitor, chili sauce sales swelled 23 per cent between 2013 and 2018, and are projected to increase another 16 per cent by 2023.
In pursuit of sauces that burn and numb, though, other qualities can get lost; chief among them, flavour. “Whenever I go to hot sauce festivals, it’s all about making things with ghost peppers and Carolina Reapers and I’m just like, ‘Well, yeah it’s cool that they’re hot, but can you still taste the other flavours in the hot sauce and in the dish?’” says Diana Kuan.
The Brooklyn- based writer and photographer has been teaching Chinese, Japanese and pan- Asian cooking classes for roughly a decade, over which time she’s noted a heightened hunger for hot sauces. Although many of her students were familiar with the bold, spicy flavours of Sichuan food, she noticed a lack of awareness when it came to the earthier, more subtly smouldering Asian chili sauces.
In her second cookbook, Red Hot Kitchen (Avery, 2019), Kuan offers an education in not just making these fiery and flavourful sauces from scratch but how to use them. She chose the nine core sauces ( sambal oelek, sriracha, nam prik pao, Thai red curry paste, sweet chili sauce, Sichuan chili oil, XO sauce, gochujang and yuzu kosho) for their gustatory depth and versatility – all can be used as ingredients as well as condiments – rather than merely for searing heat.
Accompanying each chili sauce is a range of recipes, covering contemporary ( spicy fish tacos with yuzu kosho slaw; cauliflower fried “rice” with tofu, edamame and XO sauce) and classic applications ( kimchi, Sichuan wontons and nasi goreng). “You can use Asian hot sauces for any number of cuisines, not even just Asian dishes. You can have them on flatbread pizza, you can put them in sandwiches, you can make Mexican food with some of the hot sauces,” says Kuan. “There is a wide world ready for experimentation.”
The beauty in making your own chili sauces lies in an inherent flexibility. “You can alter the flavours depending on what kind of chilies you use, and in terms of the balance of flavours,” Kuan adds. “Some of the hot sauces have this hot-sour-salty-sweet-earthy balance, and if you like the sweetness a little bit more you can up that. If you like the smokiness a little bit more you can up that. If you want your sauce tangier you can always adjust for that.”
While store-bought sriracha in particular has become a mainstream staple, high-quality versions of others, such as XO sauce, can be more difficult (and expensive) to procure. Knowing how to make your own is a clear benefit. “The flavours are just amazing,” Kuan says of the relatively recent Hong Kong invention. “It definitely deserves more attention.” Created in the 1980s by chefs in the territory, the umami-rich condiment varies kitchen to kitchen: It can be thin or chunky; spicy or mild; and ingredients can differ widely. (Kuan includes recipes for traditional and vegan versions in the book; “70 per cent of the recipes are vegetarian or vegetarian-adaptable.”)
The sauce’s name was derived from a Cognac designation meaning “Extra Old,” implying luxury and rarity. A harmonious blend of dried scallops and shrimp, bacon (in Hong Kong, drycured Jinhua ham would likely be used) and chilies, Kuan’s favourite way to eat XO sauce is simply; stirred into scrambled eggs, or spooned over plain rice with a hard-boiled or fried egg on top for a quick meal. Making it takes some patience, she adds, but roughly an hour of your time is well worth the effort. “I really like sharing it with other people, especially if they’ve never had XO sauce before. I give jars and jars to friends ( and say), ‘ Okay, just try putting a little bit on noodles or rice or eggs.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is such a revelation.’”