Chalé sauce

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Ingredients

400 g can tomatoes or 600 g fresh tomatoes
2 roasted red bell peppers
30 g tomato purée
1 small white onion, roughly diced
5 cm piece fresh root ginger, grated
1 small red Scotch Bonnet chilli chilli (use half and de-seed if you have a low heat tolerance)
½ dried chilli flakes
3 garlic cloves (optional)
To cook:
1 T cooking oil
1 onion, finely diced
1 t curry powder
1 t extra-hot chilli powder

Cooking Instructions

1. Place all the ingredients except the ‘to cook’ ones in a blender and blend together until you have a fairly smooth paste.

2. Saute the onion until soft - add the spices and cook until all melded together. Add the blended tomato mixture and simmer gently for 35–40 minutes until the tartness of the tomatoes has cooked out.

3. Use straight away, or leave to cool then store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days, or freeze for future use.

Cook's note: This basic recipe is based on my dad’s everyday cooking sauce. He would whip this up and then literally throw in any type of meat, fish or protein, but it was always tasty. You can just blend the ingredients and store the uncooked sauce for later use, or cook it and then leave to cool – either way it saves time when making many of the recipes in this book. I make a big batch of this at least once a week – you can easily double the quantity if you want to make a bigger batch, although it’s not necessary to increase the Scotch Bonnet unless you like it extra-extra-hot!

This is an extract from Zoe's Ghana Kitchen by Zoe Adjonyoh. It is published by Octopus Publishing Group.