Sweet Chili Sauce

The dressing for the Sesame Peanut Noodle Salad I made recently called for sweet chili sauce.  I didn't have any sweet chili sauce and wasn't sure I wanted to buy a whole jar of it.  So, I went looking for a recipe to make some myself.  I found a recipe on food.com - which I cannot find now.  I removed the link from my Sesame Peanut Noodles recipe, because I was going to post the chili sauce recipe separately.  And then I forgot to actually start this post and save the link here.

I have searched food.com repeatedly, and there are lots of sweet chili sauce recipes, but I just can't find this one.

Sweet Chili Sauce
adapted from a recipe on food.com

Ingredients:

• 1 8-oz. can tomato sauce
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 T cider vinegar
• 1/2 tsp. red chili flakes
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
• dash cloves
• dash allspice
• dash salt

Directions:

1. In small saucepan, mix all ingredients.
2. Simmer over low heat until thickened.
3. Store in glass jar in refrigerator.

The original recipe did not call for any chili flakes - which seemed weird since it's called sweet chili sauce - so I added some.  Since I've never actually had sweet chili sauce, I'm not sure if this tastes like the kind you'd buy in the store or not, but it is a nice flavorful sauce, and it worked really well in my noodle salad - both times I made it. (so far)

Now, what else can I use this sauce for?  Because, even though I did not buy a whole jar just to make the Sesame Peanut Noodles, I do have quite a bit of yummy sauce. 

I recently saw an ad for Papa Murphy's Thai Chicken Pizza that I'm going to try making real soon - even though I haven't tried the 'real' thing yet.  I'm not sure what else.  Any ideas?

Guess What We're Having

Image via WikipediaToday I made Pita Bread:

Pita Bread
Ingredients:

• 1 package of yeast (2-1/4 t.)
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1 cup lukewarm water

Preparation:
Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup of warm water. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Let sit for 10-15 minutes until water is frothy.
Combine flour and salt in large bowl. Make a small depression in the middle of flour and pour yeast water in depression. Slowly add 1 cup of warm water, and stir with wooden spoon or rubber spatula until elastic.
Place dough on floured surface and knead for 10-15 minutes. When the dough is no longer sticky and is smooth and elastic, it has been successfully kneaded.
Coat large bowl with vegetable oil and place dough in bowl. Turn dough upside down so all of the dough is coated.
Allow to sit in a warm place for about 3 hours, or until it has doubled in size.
Once doubled, roll out in a rope, and pinch off 10-12 small pieces. Place balls on floured surface. Let sit covered for 10 minutes. Preheat oven to 500° F. and make sure rack is at the very bottom of oven. Be sure to also preheat your baking sheet.
Roll out each ball of dough with a rolling pin into circles. Each should be about 5-6 inches across and 1/4 inch thick.
Bake each circle for 4 minutes until the bread puffs up. Turn over and bake for 2 minutes.
Remove each pita with a spatula from the baking sheet and add additional pitas for baking.
Take spatula and gently push down puff. Immediately place in storage bags.

and Cucumber Sauce:

Cucumber Sauce
Ingredients

• 8 oz. plain yogurt (not low-fat)
• 1 medium cucumber
• 1/8 teaspoon white pepper or 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 2 tablespoon dill
• 2 peeled garlic cloves, finely minced
• Juice of 1/2 lemon

Method
Place 1 medium cut up cucumber in a chopper (peel skin, remove pulp and seeds as they are very bitter,) chop until finely chopped. Spoon out on paper towels to soak up as much moisture as possible, place the chopped cucumber in a small bowl then stir in 2 finely minced garlic cloves, juice of ½ lemon, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon sugar, ½ teaspoon black pepper, 2 tablespoon dill. Pour off any water from the yogurt and blend in 8 oz, regular yogurt (not low fat) do not over-mix. Cover bowl and immediately place in refrigerator and let set undisturbed for 24 hours so the ingredients will blend and sauce re-thicken (keep chilled when not in use.)
Makes about 2 cups

Notes about the recipes to be added later, once we've actually tried them.  For now I've just copied the recipes.