Rejection Sauce
my March Found Oyster scallop tostada-inspired hot sauce took a turn (seeking help for ideas!)
As I announced in my last Substack post, I’ve been making my own fermented hot sauces at home. A new sauce for each month is the cadence I’ve decided on. For the month of March, there was no doubt in my mind that it needed to be green. Your girl loves a theme. My mind naturally went to jalapeños, which dovetailed nicely with my desire to make a milder sauce this time around — my last two were a good bit spicier.
But I didn’t want to make just any regular old green jalapeño sauce. I wanted something with personality. A green machine of fermentation!
Found Oyster’s scallop tostada (one of my favorite single bites in LA) popped into my head one night as I was drifting off to sleep. It’s not necessarily the greenest dish, but from a bird’s-eye view you could argue it’s pretty green, at least from all the herbs showered over the scallop slices. Many of the smaller elements of the dish like yuzu kosho, tart apple, lime, and basil, not only happen to be green, but also seemed like they’d marry well with the more verdant profile of jalapeños.
On the first day of the month, I bought a bunch of jalapeños from Wong Farms at the HFM, who I was surprised to see selling peppers in March. (They’re known for their peak summer pop-ups for their highly coveted mangoes.) For the initial ferment, I submerged:
217g of deseeded jalapeños
50g of green apple
and 5g of garlic
in a 3% salt brine and let it go for six days, until the active fermentation slowed. Then, once I declared the fermentation complete, I threw all the fermented solids into the blender with:
94g fresh green apple
1 tsp yuzu kosho
3 tbsp rice vin
1.5 tbsp white distilled vin
1 tbsp brine
3/4 cup basil packed
After blending, I transferred the mixture to a mason jar and threw it in the fridge to “find itself.” After my first two hot sauces, I’ve noticed that it takes a day or two for the ingredients to get to know each other and for the flavors to settle into their final form. For example, Hot Sauce #1 was ripping hot immediately after blending, but after sitting for two days, the heat mellowed significantly and the toasted garlic integrated much better.
I guess this is the part where I explain why I’m calling this March green sauce my “Rejection Sauce.”
As I was making adjustments to the initial blend — adding another tablespoon of vinegar here, a skosh more brine there — I received an unsolicited text from the guy I’d gone on six dates with, saying that he thought “it’s best if we don’t keep getting to know each other.” He explained he’d soon be leaving LA for the next 3-4 months for his next work rotation and didn’t think it would be a good idea to keep things going. Cool — as my fingers are dripping in jalapeno brine and and smeared with yuzu kosho.
I wasn’t sad. With it being so early on, I had no emotional attachment. But I won’t lie and say I wasn’t bummed upon initial read. Those were some fun dates! Plus, this was my first time getting a flat rejection from someone I was seeing.
But with my blender obnoxiously whirring with its green vortex, my brain wasn’t too hung up on the news.
Thus: Rejection Sauce.
I’ve been a bit lazy and only got around to straining the sauce today. A full five days post-blending. And… I’m a bit surprised at the outcome to say the least… It’s much thinner than I expected, akin to an aguachile consistency. It’s also not spicy at all, to the point where I’d feel like a fraud to call it a hot sauce.
None of these things are necessarily bad, but the sauce has taken on a complete different form than what I envisioned. I’m at a loss for what to put it on. My initial vision was for it to be a punchy yet ever-so sweet green hot sauce that would kill on a fish taco. But it’s a bit too thin for that job. It would either drip right off or soak through the tortilla.
Maybe this was never meant to be a hot sauce, and the hot sauce gods had a different destiny written in the clouds. Maybe it’s actually a sauce-for-crudo situation, or a dipping sauce for cold soba/somen noodles. Much like the rejection text that arrived mid-blend, the outcome wasn’t quite what I expected, but is probably still perfectly usable and delicious in the right context.
All I need are ideas for where this sauce belongs. Please comment, chat, or message me with any that comes to mind. And let me know if you’d like a bottle of Rejection Sauce — I have two :)
