Skip to main content

Inspired by Bar Santos: Piri Piri Sauce

It is one of those rare places in Los Angeles where I can feel authenticity and genuine warmth. When I first stepped into Bar Santos in Cypress Park, I was still recovering from my Portugal trip. If you recall from my IG Stories, a canceled flight, another delayed flight, lost luggage, falsely confiscated jamón ibérico, and the mystery of how airlines cannot distinguish between hotels and motels were traumatic enough to leave a mental scar. However, Bar Santos healed whatever wound remained.

Piri Piri Chicken at Bar Santos

The second time was to sip their Porto Tonico. I rarely talk about prices when it comes to bars and restaurants, but $9 for a drink, and a refreshingly delicious drink at that, is unheard of, especially in Los Angeles. While Porto Tonico got me back to Bar Santos, it was their Piri Piri Chicken that made me fall hard for them. It is very rare for me to try to duplicate a dish. Partly because I don't like to intelligently dissect what I am eating because it takes away from simply savoring it. Partly because I believe some good things aren't meant to be duplicated but enjoyed in whatever space and time they were meant to be enjoyed.

Porto Tonico

Their Piri Piri Chicken was too good and the idea of making my own Piri Piri sauce lingered in my mind. You know me... I cannot let go. The first recipe test of the sauce was a success; however, the chicken turned out somewhat disappointing. It wasn't the sauce. My impatience had me crank up the oven too high and overcook the chicken, among other things; however, Piri Piri Shrimp Orzo turned out delicious, so stay tuned for that recipe.

INGREDIENTS
[makes about fourteen ounces]
two garlic cloves
three Thai red chili peppers, stems removed
one Serrano pepper, stem removed
one red bell pepper, seeds and stem removed
one tomato
one lemon, juiced
a half bunch of cilantro
a half tablespoon of oregano
a half tablespoon of smoked paprika
two ounces of unsalted butter, at room temperature
pinches of salt for flavor

Place all the ingredients in the blender. Start with a few pinches of salt. After blending, add more pinches of salt if you feel something is missing to bring out the flavors of the tomato.

I earn commission on qualified purchases.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Art of the Cold Shoulder

The shoulder has repeatedly been treated as one of fashion’s safest ways to be sensual. Most of us give Brigitte Bardot the credit for making the off-the-shoulder silhouette iconic—and certainly, few wore it with more persuasive nonchalance—but fashion history tells a far longer story. Recognizable versions of the neckline appear as far back as the 17th century, when European bodices widened and dipped low enough to reveal both the décolletage and shoulders. By the 19th century, the silhouette had become a fixture of evening dress. Queen Victoria herself wore a broad, shoulder-baring neckline for her 1840 wedding, and through the 1850s and 1860s, off-the-shoulder ball gowns paired tightly corseted bodices with sweeping skirts and bertha collars that framed exposed shoulders in lace, silk, and ruffles. Victorian modesty, it turns out, was considerably more situational than its reputation suggests. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal The silhouette continued to surface as fash...
Post a Comment
Read more

Impossibility of Jason Arday

When I first read about Jason Arday, he had just resigned from the University of Cambridge. Accusations of plagiarism reminded me of Claudine Gay , the former president of Harvard University, who resigned after accusations of plagiarism surfaced. There certainly was more to her resignation than accusations of plagiarism. She was also accused of antisemitism following her congressional testimony. Her story ended with her becoming the shortest-serving president in the history of Harvard. When a second article about Arday caught my eye, he had been found dead at his home in South London. To this day, suicide has not been named as the cause of death, but I find myself speculating that it was suicide, given the circumstances surrounding his death and the absence of any reported foul play. I imagine many of us are wondering the same thing. I think about his last days. On August 5, the university announced that it had accepted his resignation and would open an investigation into allegations c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Newsom's Affair: Somewhere Between His & Her Stories

Did Ruby Rippey lose her voice twenty years ago, as she suggests in her Vanity Fair essay, when her affair with then San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom exploded into public scandal, or did she simply have no defense to offer at the time? Perhaps Kamala Harris’s advice that she remain silent was not merely counsel to let time provide clearer perspective, but the advice of an attorney who understood that no arrangement of words could defend what Rippey had done to Alex Tourk, her husband at the time. By Pablo Picasso at LACMA For the record, I have said before that I will never vote for Gavin Newsom. My opinion of him is exceptionally low. So none of what follows should be mistaken for a dispatch from Team Newsom. It was not until I read Rippey’s essay that I learned of Newsom’s affair with her. From it, I learned that she worked for him. What elevated the story from garden-variety political infidelity to something approaching daytime-soap-opera tawdriness was that Rippey was married to Ne...
Post a Comment
Read more

Curated: Ballet Flats for Fashionistas

The ballet flat began, quite literally, with a foot in the theater. Claire McCardell and Capezio helped coax the slipper from studio floor to city pavement in the 1940s, while Audrey Hepburn and Brigitte Bardot later supplied the sort of cinematic endorsement no advertising budget could manufacture. What had been designed for pliés became a shorthand for modern femininity: graceful without fragility, polished without the architectural inconvenience of a heel. at Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France Its staying power lies in that contradiction. The ballet flat is delicate but practical, prim but faintly rebellious—the shoe of a woman who has somewhere to be and no intention of arriving with sore feet. And so, with a small curtsy and considerably better arch support, here are 12 curated ballet flats ready to take their turn in the spotlight. ANCIENT GREEK SANDALS Iro PVC Ballet Flats JavaScript is currently disabled in this browser. Reactivate it to view this content. ANCIENT GREEK SANDALS I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pasta al Tonno: A Korean Gal’s Ramyeon in Pasta

Growing up Korean, ramyeon was the reliable quick meal: intensely satisfying, reliably filling, and unlikely to leave much of a dent in the bank account. It was a cheap thrill, the sort of thing we were regularly warned was not particularly healthy while continuing to keep it stocked in nearly every Korean home. That contradiction was built into its history. Korean ramyeon was introduced in 1963, with government financing, as one possible response to South Korea’s severe postwar food shortage. Ceramic bowl was wheel-thrown and glazed by me. Once regarded largely as budget food, ramyeon now commands a global following that could almost compete with BTS. ARMY, please hold the hate mail. Pasta al tonno may not share ramyeon’s austere, mission-driven origin, but it occupies a similarly dependable place in many Italian kitchens, particularly among younger cooks and college students. It is quick, inexpensive, and deeply satisfying without putting an unnecessary dent in the wallet. Humble ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Trump et Gay

I love that word—et. It means “and” in French. I’m borrowing it to title this essay, to dress up a dreadful topic. From Sam Moyer’s Circle of Confusion exhibition at Blum Gallery, Culver City If you follow me on Instagram and regularly watch my Stories, you may have noticed that I stopped reading the news for a while. It took time to ease back into my morning routine after the headlines about former presidents Trump and Gay finally began to fade. It was simply too much—two of them at once. Of course, being accused of plagiarism in academia is serious—especially when you’re the president of Harvard University. But Claudine Gay’s plagiarism seems pale compared to what Donald Trump is accused of. I won’t leave out that former President Gay was also accused of antisemitic remarks during her congressional testimony, for which she later apologized. But does an apology change the accusation? Her words during that hearing had me questioning how hateful speech could be treated as context-depen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Oh Snap! BTS Just Made the Grammys Irrelevant

I am not ARMY. The first BTS member to intrigue me was J-Hope, who appeared last year on one of my favorite Korean shows, Chef & My Fridge, with his refrigerator in tow. There, I learned that he had performed at Le Gala des Pièces Jaunes at Paris La Défense Arena at the personal invitation of Brigitte Macron, France’s first lady. Naturally, I found the performance on YouTube. Thirty-five thousand people filled the arena as thousands of voices in France roared the Korean lyric, “adeuri neom jal nagaseo mianhae, eomma.” One need not own a purple light stick to recognize that kind of cultural power. Afterward, I became mildly obsessed with J-Hope and, by association, BTS. Original photo by Sudhith Xavier. Photoshop by ChatGPT. A song currently in heavy rotation on my playlist is SWIM, from their latest album, ARIRANG. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and remained there for three consecutive weeks. During its debut week, its songs occupied the top nine positions on the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gwyneth Paltrow is Aloof, So What Are You?

There are days when I feel utterly disconnected from the world. It took an IG feed from Diet Prada for me to learn that Gwyneth Paltrow had starred in an ad for 51 Park, a luxury residential development in Herzliya, Israel. Herzliya is an affluent coastal city north of Tel Aviv, and the project is being marketed as a luxury residential development there. To be clear, 51 Park is not in Gaza. It is in Israel. But precision does not make the geography innocent: parts of present-day Herzliya overlap with or sit near the land of al-Haram, also known as Sidna Ali, a Palestinian Arab village depopulated in 1948. Lisbon, Portugal There is misinformation about where the 51 Park residential development is located, and the distinction matters. If our beating of Gwyneth Paltrow is going to be effective, it should at least be accurate. I have never liked her. I have never hated her. Even before the 51 Park ad controversy broke, I felt she was irrelevant. Her acting skills are not impressive. Would ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Shrimp & Kimchi Inari

Inarizushi emerged in Japan during the Edo period, when seasoned fried tofu pockets filled with vinegared rice became popular as inexpensive street food. Its name is tied to Inari, the deity associated with rice, agriculture and prosperity, and to the foxes regarded as Inari’s messengers and linked in folklore to fried tofu. Inari, however, has never been Japanese to me. Growing up in South Korea, I knew it as yubu chobap, a meal my mom packed for school lunches and picnics—and one that always felt like a treat. Rather than sushi rice, she filled the tofu pockets with different kinds of fried rice. Perhaps that is why I have never regarded the pouch as something requiring too much fidelity. Shrimp & Kimchi Inari is my homage to kimchi fried rice, only quieter: shrimp and kimchi folded into rice with less seasoning than I would ordinarily use for the fried rice version. The restraint is intentional. The lighter seasoning leaves room for the fried tofu skin, with its distinctive swee...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pad Mee, My Way

In Thai and Lao kitchens, Pad Mee points broadly to stir-fried noodles: rice noodles loosened in a hot pan, glossed with sauce, sharpened by aromatics, and adjusted according to region, household, occasion, and whoever is standing closest to the wok. Ceramic bowl was wheel-thrown and glazed by me. Its history does not arrive with one neat origin story, which is part of its charm. Like many Southeast Asian noodle dishes, Pad Mee sits at the intersection of local rice culture, Chinese-influenced noodle cookery, and the everyday reality of feeding people quickly and well. Before a dish becomes famous enough to acquire fandom, it is usually just a meal. That is where Pad Mee is most interesting. It exists in variations: some sweeter, some darker, some spicier, some closer to Lao-style caramelized noodles served at gatherings, others tied to Thai regional cooking. Pad Mee Korat, from Nakhon Ratchasima, is one well-known branch of the family, but it is not the whole tree. Pad Mee’s real gl...
Post a Comment
Read more