PORTUGUESE PIRI-PIRI SAUCE FROM QUINTA D'AVO The Spanish Table 1427 Western Ave Seattle, WA 98101 206.682.2827 (tel) 510.548.1383 (fax) 1814 San Pablo Ave. Berkeley, CA 94702 510.548.1370 (tel) 206.682.2814 (fax) 109 N Guadalupe St. Santa Fe, NM 87501 505.986.0243 (tel) 505.986.9244 (fax) mailorder@spanishtable.com (for mail orders from any of the locations) ($1.99 for a 2.5-ounce bottle)
When it comes to hot sauce which I love, I’m always on the look-out forhot sauces that have a great deal of flavor beyond the heat…and a non-thermonuclear dose of heat, at that. What good does all that fire do, I always wonder, other than prove your intestinal fortitude? So I was thrilled to recently discover a Portuguese product that does exactly what I want hot sauce to do.
In Portugal, that wonderful but oft-overlooked food country, there is a ubiquitous sauce called molho de piri-piri or, more commonly, piri-piri. It is based on a type of red chili (the piri-piri) that once upon a time made the journey from Brazil to Portuguese Angola, and now, growing profusely in Angola, is brought to Portugal by the ton. I’ve had the sauce all kinds of ways: dried peppers steeped in oil, fresh peppers blended with oil and vinegar to make a thicker sauce.
This particular piri-piri, bottled in Portugal, is of the latter type—and the best piri-piri I’ve ever tasted in the U.S. It is a bright orange-ish red, about the thickness of a thin tomato juice (much thicker than Tabasco, for example). It has lots of specific chili flavor, as well as a nice, vinegary acidity—but is only moderate in heat, so you can really use this stuff to add flavor, not just BTUs.
In Portugal, it is de rigueur on grilled chicken. Here’s an American translation: if you use it as your hot sauce in preparing Buffalo Chicken Wings (in the classic upstate New York recipe, you mix hot sauce with melted butter), your wings will really take off. The Quinta d’Avo Piri-Piri is available through The Spanish Table, which has three great stores on the West Coast. Shipping is extra.