Cookbook challenge #6: Zhug from Veggiestan

This week's cookbook challenge didn't seem to generate as many numbers as normal - only two.  As one of these featured obvious egg - which Mr K won't eat - we were left with only one choice (I don't put many limitations on the choices that are made but if it has meat in or obvious egg, then I have to reject it).

The one choice felt like a little bit of a cheat as it is a sauce rather than a complete meal.  However, it's something quite different and so I built the week's meals around it.  The 'winner' was Janis, writer of Gluttons for Punishment who chose 'zhug' a hot sauce.

The best thing about it?  Unless you eat all of it (a tough ask), it's propoint free.  The whole of the mixture comes to two propoints.  

Veggiestan (with a wealth of further recipes available on a blog here) is written by Sally Butcher, owner of Persian shop Persepolis in Peckham.  It is one of those books that clearly took a lot of time in its photography.  Beautiful.  The instructions are easy to follow and the meals I have made so far from it have worked.  Nothing memorable enough to have a second stab at though so far.

Ingredients: - 

one bulb of garlic (I tried to do this trick to try and quickly peel the garlic.  It didn't quite work but it did speed things up a bit)
a tablespoon of caraway seeds
three cardamom pods
six dried chillies (I used these habanero chillies) soaked in water for at least an hour
a large bunch of coriander, stalks removed.

A really simple one this - blitz all until smooth.

Then use for various dishes.  So far, I've used it on top of Quorn burgers, in a salad wrap with a teeny bit of mayonnaise and in a little bit of cooked pasta. All good choices.  I warn you, it's super hot.  Like, you want to take a big old glug of water within thirty seconds of eating it... it'll warm further and then dissipate to a pleasant warmth and then be gone.  I wouldn't recommend eating it in great spoonfuls for breakfast though.

I'm also rather pleased with these rostis that I made to go with it - definitely something I'm going to be adding to the repertoire more regularly.  These two came in at 4pp.