As a consequence of the low carb lifestyle we eat quite a lot of salads in our household, usually with a couple of big and juicy rib-eye steaks sliced on top.
When it comes to salad composition, a really simple one with just spinach, rocket, sugar snap peas, halved cherry tomatoes, grated or ribboned carrots, thinly sliced spring cabbage, avocado, thinly sliced red onion and chopped coriander is a favourite. Here is a more elaborate example: kick-ass paleo salad.
Dubbed the "kick-ass" approach to salad (combining greens with some high energy stuff supplying necessary and healthy fats, a term that I think originated over at Mark's Daily Apple), it is not more than approriate to serve it with an equally kick-ass dressing.
To spice it up a bit we usually make a thai style dressing with a big chilli hit. However, recently we were introduced to African Volcano peri peri hot sauce (@AfricanVolcano) by the maker Grant Hawthorne (@GrantHawthorne), so last time we decided to replace the traditional finely chopped chilli with some of that.
Result? Incredibly tasty.
The African Volcano peri peri hot sauce is made with priority on flavour first and heat second. It is certainly not the hottest hot sauce I've tried (looking forward to a rumoured version with more zing and chilli kick) but it definitely is up there with the tastiest.
Tip: try dipping biltong in it... Seriously addictive! Caution, if you decide to try this you need to realise that you will run out of sauce and biltong very, very quickly!
In order to get the most out of the peri peri, Grant likes to point out that fresh lemon juice is required. Maybe that's why it goes so well in this otherwise pretty classic thai salad dressing where lime juice is an important ingredient.
A marriage made in heaven, as they say.
Ingredients
2 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice
2 minced garlic cloves
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 small red onion very finely chopped
1 tablespoon African Volcano (if you don't have this, use finely chopped red chilli)
salt
fresh crushed black pepper
Method
Just mix it all together. Pour over salad. Mix. Done.
Here's a bonus tip though.
When we make our kick-ass rib-eye steak salad (as per above), once you have fried and rested the steaks you will have a fair amount of steak juices.
Pour all of it from the frying pan, and the plate you rested the steaks on, straight into the dressing mixing bowl and give it a stir before you pour it on the salad.
Waste not, want not, and those steak juice are full of delicious meaty flavour.
Right. Time to go chuck the chicken wings that have rested cosily in African Volcano marinade over night in the oven and see if the marinade is as fantastic as the sauce.
(Full disclaimer: I was given one bottle of African Volcano sauce, and one bottle of marinade, to play aorund with and see what I thought. You now know what I honestly thought so far. Check @manne on Twitter if the chicken wings enjoyed their encounter with the marinade.)
