The old boy on his bike, bringing a bee covered basket loaded with fresh wild honey combs, selling old Mekong bottles filled with honey popped by yesterday. In true Issan style my wife wanted some of the combs (complete with bee larvae) as an snack. After she and the extended family had eaten, there were still a few untouched combs and other remains left over.

I had said I wanted some of the wax to experiment making a shoe polish, despite having a father that was a beekeeper I have never had enough raw wax to be worth refining. The wax and honey goo I recovered on this occasion only made a few sweet smelling but quite ineffective and ant covered firelighters.

However the honey that I extracted from the combs (using a simple sieve presss) was great, raiding the chilli plant in the kitchen garden resulted in a wonderful sweet chilli dipping sauce. There really is a taste difference when using fresh from the plant chilli, IMHO.

Looks great mate, was it just chillies mixed with honey or did you add any other ingredient?

Just honey and chilli finely chopped. I was worried about mold growth, but two days later it has all been used - long shelf life is not a problem I know honey is a preservative but have considered using boil water to zap the bugs on the chilli skins or heating the sauce before bottling. More on bugs big and small elsewhere.

In my fried chicken experiments I added some Kaffir Lime juice to this chilli sauce with positive results, more on that subject next week, but it does make it quite runny.

Sounds great - I don't think I can get kaffir lime juice though!

I've never heard of using the juice of Kaffir limes, the leaves are widely used in Thai cooking but I don't think I've seen a recipe calling for the juice.

Edit: I stand corrected, I've found a couple of sources; the leaves still seem to be more popular up here though.

I've never heard of using the juice of Kaffir limes, the leaves are widely used in Thai cooking but I don't think I've seen a recipe calling for the juice.

Edit: I stand corrected, I've found a couple of sources; the leaves still seem to be more popular up here though.

The leavs give you that great lime flavor without the acid of the lime.