(Wallflower/Blues Gangster/BeatHog Dave Rinck introduces a new Che Underground feature with culinary flair.)
Aside from music, eating is in my opinion “the other” great joyful sensory activity in life. And for the past 20 years, ever since I left San Diego, I’ve had the good fortune to travel the world trying some of the best foods the human race ever invented. (The accompanying photo was taken in one of my favorite restaurants in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon circa summer 2003. OK, it’s a Hezbullah stronghold — but man, I’d never let a little thing like Islamic fundamentalism stand between me and a good tabouli!)
Now, there’s really nothing out there that can hold a candle to three rolled tacos with guacamole or a carne asada burrito from Roberto’s, but I have discovered some fantastic grub over the years. So now, just like we’ve shared music we’ve discovered since we parted company, I wanna share with you here one of my all-time fav foods.
Let me start by saying that the Portuguese have what is, in my opinion, one of the greatest but yet least-known culinary traditions on the planet. Not surprising, since they spent several centuries building a colonial empire whose raison d’être was basically control of the world’s spice trade. Typical Portuguese staple dishes reflect a history that encompasses great food spots like Macau, Goa, the Molucca spice islands of present-day Indonesia and Brazil.
Now peri peri sauce is as Portuguese as green wine, but it originally comes firmly from Mozambique and Angola. In fact, the term peri peri actually derives from pili pili, which means African bird’s-eye chili in the Bantu languages of East Africa, including Swahili here in Kenya.
I always associate it with Southern Africa ’cause there’s lots of peri peri places in those countries. This is basically because of Portuguese refugees who left Mozambique during the civil war there or after it became independent. They didn’t wanna go back to Europe where they’d have to wash their own dishes, and plus they’d be held liable for fathering all those children, so they settled in places like South Africa and Zimbabwe.
When I lived in Harare, I used to eat it all the time at a little restaurant downtown that served pretty much nothing but peri peri chicken. It was the Zim version of Roberto’s, so good we’d occasionally find ourselves eating dinner there on the same day as we’d already had lunch at the same place!
Here’s how I re-create that dish. (Note that you can really peri peri almost anything, prawns being another obvious target. I’ve gone for chicken here since I can’t get good prawns in Nairobi.)
Ingredients
1 lb or so of boneless chicken breast in strips
1 or 2 red onions
A red or green bell pepper (or both)
A couple cloves of garlic
Some good tasty olive oil
Some salt
Fresh ground black pepper
Ground white pepper
Ground red pepper
Spicy hot red chili flakes
Some Jack Daniels (or similar) whiskey
Some good foccacia bread, or some sourdough or French bread
Here’s what you do …
First, you probably want to put on some appropriate music. I’d say obviously go for some soft sexy Lusophone numbers like Cesaria Evora’s “Café Atlántico” or some jazz samba like Getz/Jobim.
OK, next, chop up the onions, the bell peppers and the garlic. Throw them in a frying pan, or even better a big wok. Add the olive oil and start them sautéing on a fairly high heat. You wanna get it so that there’s a fair bit of olive oil in the pan, maybe a third of an inch in the bottom, since it’s gonna have to cover the chicken too eventually, and more important, it’s gonna taste great when you dip that bread in there later. Now take it off the fire and add the chicken strips and some salt.
Now dig, at this point you wanna throw the spices in there and mix it all around. Those of you that cook know that ground pepper works like a sound system. The ground red pepper is the hot spicy treble, black pepper is the tasty midrange, and the white pepper is the bass woofer supporting the whole deal and making the house shake. You need to experiment a little to get the right mix.
In this case though, don’t worry too much about the treble, since those spicy red chili flakes are gonna light up the high end. You want some really hot red chili flakes here guys ’cause peri peri chicken is supposed to have a bite. Some of the best renditions I’ve had in Maputo in Mozambique almost make you see stars. Gives whole new meaning to the phrase, “Taste the fury (babyface)!”
Now take the whole thing and put it back on the fire and let the chicken start to sauté. Once it cooks a bit and the chicken strips turn white, turn down the heat and add the whiskey. Not so much that you flood the place, but it should mix with the oil and form a nice sauce. Let the whole thing simmer now until it’s done. In fact, cook it as slow as is humanly possible. This is a good time to catch up on your Che Underground blogging, or how about send me an e-mail and say “hi”?
By now, the garlic, the onions and the whiskey should be fused together to produce an aroma that transports you to planet hungry. And don’t worry, you recovering alcoholics: The alcohol in the whiskey cooks off. Nobody ever got a hangover from peri peri chicken (and nobody took drugs).
Vegans? Well, skip this post and go read up on the Penetrators instead — peri peri tofu sounds awful, worse than bean sprouts and gravy at Topsy’s …
OK, once it’s all done, serve it up with some green salad and that bread. Leave the wok in the center of the table though, ‘cause oh man, when you dip some good bread into a nice searing-hot, oily peri peri sauce, you’ll be in heaven believe me, it’s the culinary version of an Eric Bacher guitar solo! Enjoy, or bom apetite as they say in Lisbon!
Note that an over-the-top optimum way to make peri peri sauce is to take an old bottle or jar and fill it up about a forth of the way with whiskey. (This is also a good way to get rid of leftover booze when you get out of rehab.) Then take a bunch of hot bird’s eye chilies and chop’em up and put in there. Put in those peppers, and garlic, and salt, and then fill the rest of the jar with oil. Let it sit for about six months to a year.
OK, it takes a year, but if you start now, you’ll be ready in time for the next Che Underground reunion. The results are amazing, plus it looks cool on your kitchen shelf while it’s percolating.
— David Rinck