I am not sure if I have mentioned this on Shutterview before so it is necessary for the purposes of this post to state that I am a South African Greek.

This has become a necessary piece of information because if I was to omit this fact everyone would think that I was a bit strange and lived in some sort of gypsy household.

It's Sunday. Sundays generally mean family lunch in a Greek household. Today is no different. Lunch today consisted of me (hung over), my Mom, her boyfriend and my Pappou (Pappou is the Greek word for Grandfather). My Pappou makes the most unbelievably incredible chili sauce. I have used this sauce for as long as I can remember eating and before that I was eating it without my mother telling me. So this sauce is a large part of my life because I eat everyday.

The thing is, my Pappou has been very lax in getting his secret recipe to me for the famous sauce. Now one can speculate that his reasons are traditionally Greek in that the recipe is his and I need to learn my own recipe, but I think that he is just so involved in the recipe and making it that he has really never gotten round to giving it to me. That and the fact that he has never written down a recipe for this sauce, it's all in his head. That is 35 years of recipe, trial and error and sweat and tears (Chilli's are hot, they cause tears).

All of this has now changed. My mother and I sat at lunch today and sneakily went about squeezing little tidbits of information out of my Pappou until we had it all: methodology, ingredients, quantities (kind of) and all the rest of the stuff.

I can now go on happily living with the knowledge that in 35 years my sauce will be as good as my Pappou's, even though I have the recipe!

Labels: Chilli Sauce, Pappou, Recipe