Fire Water or Turning Up the Heat in the Nduja Wars
Back in the spring, when I first encountered the smoky, fiery, spreadable Calabrian salami called nduja at London’s Borough Market and posted on it (on April Fool’s Day, no less), I had no idea that nduja fever would sweep American meatheads and that my posts on trying to recreate this salami would become the most frequently viewed of all I’ve written. Apparently, you don’t have to taste the real thing to catch nduja fever; its regional nickname, as “the Red Nutella,” is enough to enflame the imagination.
The biggest obstacle I faced in reproducing what I had tasted is that I don’t have access to any of the Calabrian peppers that traditionally go into this salami. Seeds from Italy had already sold out of Calabrian peppers for the season, and Scott over at Sausage Debauchery is the only one to have tracked down some concentrato di peperoncini with peppers from Calabria at a reasonable price – almost a kilo for a little more than $10 – but I have yet to see a can of it! (Hint, hint. If he can’t send me a mail order address, maybe we’ll just have to do Christmas early this year, and mail him some goodies from the clubhouse in exchange for some cans of fire concentrate.)
In the meantime, I am working on perfecting a secret weapon of my own to turn up the heat.
I’ve written before about the Thai chilis I’m growing this year, and I’ve fallen in love with the clear, bright intensity of their 80,000 Scoville units of heat. This time of year, I’m putting up chilis to keep me warm through the winter, and the experiment I’m most pleased with is simply preserving them in a bottle of vodka. Since these peppers are tiny, a week’s harvest of 2-3 dozen only fills about 1/2″ of the bottle, but that 1/2″ is enough to transform an ordinary bottle of vodka into fire water that heats you from the tip of your tongue to the tips of your toes. Every week, I’m adding more of these chilis, and I should have the bottle at least half full by the time I’m ready to make my next batch of nduja.
September 24th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Larbo, I’ve been meaning to ask you about this since Tuesday – are you intending to use the chili flavoured vodka IN the next batch of nduja?
I was lucky enough when I was making mine to have a Calabrian restaurant down the street from our house, that just so happens to import bottled Calabrian peppers, amongst other things. Of course, I didn’t find these until after I’d already ground up half the dried peppers I needed for my version. It’s still hanging, but I’m intending to pull it down soon for a taste test.
PS – my nduja post is the most popular one on my blog, too! It’s funny what a hunger people seem to be having for such a niche item. I still remember when I first saw a picture of it earlier this year, I’d thought it was some sort of fermented tomato product.
Oh, how perceptions have changed.
September 25th, 2009 at 6:38 am
As squeamish as Americans are about their food and where it comes from, it does seem peculiar that a raw, fermented meat spread should be the hottest new salami!
As for the fire water, I have so many plans… Yes, I plan to use some in my next batch of nduja to give it that fiery kick. I’m also working on a recipe for some “Three-Alarm Bloody Marys” to serve at J & K’s chili cookoff this fall. Finally, this seems like just the stuff to heat up a cream sauce. We have a recipe we like for lamb in a harissa cream sauce, with lots of caramelized onions, and a splash of this seems like just what it needs to bring the fire alive.
Finally, Scott has taken pity on me and is sending a CARE package of Calabrian peppers (both dried and canned) from his dealer in Brooklyn, so I’ll experiment with those too and figure out how much to incorporate into my next batch.
If anyone out there in the greater blogosphere knows of a mail order source for Calabrian peppers – at a reasonable price! – please let me and the thousands of other nduja fanatics know!
January 29th, 2010 at 5:45 am
[...] Then inspiration struck: he wants crazy? He came to the right guys; we can show him crazy! If nduja is known as the “the red nutella” because it’s often spread on grilled bread, then why not come up with an ndujatella, a cooked version that would be ready to eat right away? Since I enjoy making emulsified sausages, like mortadella, while Scott has sworn off them, he put me in charge, and this is what I came up with: the same, basic procedures as mortadella, only Calabrian chilis (both concentrate and powder) substituted for the usual, delicate spices. Ndujadella was born! And, as if all those “picantissimo” chilis weren’t enough, why not add some cubes of pork tongue, marinated in my Thai chili fire water? [...]