HOt OiL
These are the kinds of things that I'm apt to do. I decided to make pepper and herb-infused oil with the half-hearted goal of giving some away as a Christmas present. Here's the crop so far:
In France and the Benelux and I think Germany and Italy too, this is what people who like spicy eat with pizza. It's commercially available but like a lot of things that are commercially available, the versions you can get in the store usually contain inferior ingredients and less-than-natural flavors. Most notably, canola or some other oil instead of olive oil. I set out to make a superior oil and in so doing created a more environmentally sound and commercially reactionary Christmas gift. It's not necessarily cheap though. I didn't add it up, but I figure this must come in at four or five times the cost of the store bought equivalent.
Here's how it's done:
1. Buy some 33 cl (half-bottles of wine). I discovered that the bordeaux-shaped bottles (like the one with the cork in it in the photo) are better because the seeds and peppers are less likely to make their way down the neck and out of the bottle. I should have known this. Bordeaux is known for developing a sediment after aging and the bottles are designed to help the drinker get most of the wine out without having to drink the sediment.
2. Drink the wine (very unpleasant part of the task). This was a white and a rose because I wanted clear glass bottles.
3. Remove the labels from the bottle (probably the most difficult part of the project) and clean and dry them.
4. Add the tasty stuff. I used a big sprig of thyme, a couple of bay leaves, about a tea spoon of mixed pepper corns, about a table spoon of coriander seeds, about a tea spoon of oregano (or marjoram if you prefer) and about 40 little peppers "bec d'oiseau'. I think it might be the same chilis that are chopped up and sprinkled over pizza in the U.S. but I'm not sure. I broke some of them up in an attempt to make the oil spicier but I left a lot of them whole for aesthetic reasons. You might be tempted to add garlic. Don't do it. There is a real risk of botulism from trying to preserve garlic in oil.
5. Fill the bottle with the best oil you can afford. I used first cold press extra virgin olive oil.
6. (Possibly optional) I heard that you can simply let the oil infuse for about a month but I also heard that restaurants heat the oil to make it infuse quicker. This is probably done in a double-boiler. Being impatient, I put the bottle in the microwave for about 3 minutes (watch it! Oil expands quickly when heated and will push all of your herbs and spices up and out of the neck of the bottle). Allow to cool and infuse. This also changed the buoyancy of the various ingredients; most of the peppers sank to the bottom.
7. Add one of those little bar nozzles (seen in the photo) so that you can drizzle the oil and keep most of the tasty stuff in the bottle. They're available anywhere adult beverages are sold for a couple of bucks.
The results: Well, first off, they're cute. I like the way the peppers kind of ring-around-punt in the bottom of the bottle. So far, after about four days of infusion, the oil is very tasty of "herbes de provence", but not very spicy. Time will tell. If my brother-in-law tells me it's not spicy enough, I'm going to try making some more oil next year using dried habaneros Bwuhahahah!
x-posted to my lj