Hot Sauce Relish with Middle Eastern Flavour

This is a delicious hot sauce, green in colour and pungent with spice. It is the all-purpose seasoning in the Yemenite kitchen, giving its potent flavour to vegetable soups and stews, which along with flat pita breads form the traditional daily diet.

Try Zhoog spooned into pita bread sandwiches filled with spicy meat and salad, with tahini, or with simmered chicken. The Yemenite friend who gave me this recipe eats it on spaghetti, which I found surprisingly good.