Shoppers dive for cover as chef’s eyewatering chilli sauce causes a terror alert - Times Online
Posted October 3, 2007 – 8:31 am in: Sauces
You know your chilli is hot when they have to call out the Hazardous Area Response Team.
For three hours a mysterious cloud of acrid smoke hovered over some of London’s busiest streets. As shoppers ran coughing and spluttering for cover, police sealed off three roads and evacuated homes and businesses in the heart of Soho, fearing a chemical attack or a dangerous toxic leak.
As the ambulance service sent in its Hazardous Area Response Team Unit, firefighters wearing specialist breathing apparatus entered the deserted streets to seek out the source.
Soon after 7pm on Monday they emerged from the smoke carrying a huge cooking pot containing about 9lb of smouldering dried chillies. Shoppers dive for cover as chef’s eyewatering chilli sauce causes a terror alert - Times Online.
Tags:Nam prik pao recipe
- 4 tbsp oil
- 3 tbsp chopped garlic
- 3 tbsp chopped shallot
- 3 tbsp chopped dried red chillies
- 1 tbsp fermented shrimp paste
- 1 tbsp fish sauce
- 2 tsp palm sugar
- Heat the oil, add the garlic and shallots and fry briefly. Remove from oil and set aside.
- Add chillies and fry until they start to change colour. Remove and set aside.
- In a pestle and mortar, pound the shrimp paste, add the chillies, garlic and shallots.
- Over a low heat, return all the ingredients to the oil, and fold into a uniform paste.
- The resulting thick, slightly oily red/black sauce will keep almost indefinitely.
- If you wish you can add more fish sauce and/or sugar to get the flavour you want.