A very good friend of Italian ancestry recently gave me a Sheriff’s badge and three bottles of D.L.Jardine’s Texas hot sauces. There’s Texas Champagne, a cayenne pepper sauce that is labeled simply HOT; Texas Kicker, a Habanero pepper sauce, which is XXHOT and Blazing Saddles, another Habanero Pepper sauce that carries an XXXHot designation. All three fit the requirements of real food, as they contain no preservatives of any kind – just various peppers, vegetables and fruit juices.

He knows, this friend, that I can’t handle really hot stuff, but in addition to being Italian, he has lived for many years in the East and doesn’t have a problem with bottled fire; and besides, what are old friends for?

This isn’t said to disparage D.L.Jardine’s hot stuff or anyone else’s.  No, it’s just to say that hot sauces and the extreme use of some spices have gotten to be more a test of endurance than a condiment, more a measure of testosterone and/or lack of sensory receptors in the human tongue than a taste enhancement. There are restaurant/bars that have thousands of little bottles lining the walls, each claiming to contain something hotter than the Devil’s crotch. Many, many, many live up to and exceed the claim.

This desire to sear the taste buds used to be impossible for me to understand, but as I have gotten older I find my tolerance for some hot sauces has increased as my taste buds have begun to dull. I can now use a little Tabasco on my collards, so I have come a long way, but my kid – who still has an intact taster and an unjaded mouth - won’t go near any of them; most children I know won’t. They still have the sensory organs to taste everything and just don’t appreciate the burn that comes with HOT peppers.

I have been told that hot peppers, hot coffee and extremely spiced foods are usual in hot climates because they stimulate the body to sweat and thereby promote cooling. I say – get hold of a fan, Pal; lie down in a mud hole, Stud. Go to the beach!

Peppers surely do make a body sweat, but it has never seemed to me that I was any cooler for being a sweaty mess. I’m still hot, I’m sweating and the blisters forming in my mouth hurt. Maybe it’s a distraction from the heat or one just feels cooler in comparison when one holds a burning brickette in the mouth.  I don’t know, but I think 'hot' has its limits in the culinary world. Then again, if you can’t taste much of anything, extremely hot stuff might be useful. I haven’t gotten there, but can imagine the future where I might embrace the stuff in order to taste anything at all.

All three of D.L’s sauces are shades of red. Red signifies ‘hot’, but green in a pepper bottle signifies HOT - REALLY HOT … how hot? REALLY %$ck*n^ HOT, that HOT.  We have some Trinidadian and Dominican friends who made a Habanero sauce once or twice a year. They used a special blender because the process would taint the space age plastic vessel and make it unusable for anything else. I never learned the name of this concoction; mostly they called it ‘hot sauce’ or just sauce. I called it Carmelita’s Chernoble Sauce.

A Trinidadian friend showed me how to make it one day. None of the ingredients could be found in our neighborhood despite the abundance of Island Expats and bodegas. She had to go somewhere above 125th Street for the peppers – which looked like Habanero peppers and probably were, but of a really potent strain and a green leafy plant that looked and tasted like a very potent Cilantro – but wasn’t like the Cilantro found or grown anywhere I am aware of and which she insisted was something else. To the whole peppers and Cilantro (for lack of a better name) was added salt, vinegar, a citrus juice - either lemon or lime – and a tiny bit of sugar. The Cuisinart was pulsed a few times to break everything down and then it was allowed to run.

If you were politically active in the 60’s and early 70’s, are a grizzly bear or have had an encounter with pepper spray for any reason you will almost certainly be familiar what happens to you as you stand there tending the machine; your eyes start to burn and your throat begins to close. You are being subdued by the off gassing from these pretty orangey/red peppers. My Dominican instructor left the room while the machine whirred away and came back in up-wind through another door, down low under the invisible pepper cloud and turned the machine off. We opened windows and let things settle down. This was industrial strength HEAT, although probably just a little mild for bear repellant or riot control.

It had a surprisingly quality, however, other than the intensely over the top heat. It tasted great; first it was grassy and sweet and clean - clean like nothing else - and then it sanitized the teeth, burned through the saliva coating the tongue, blistered the lips and blew through the scorched taste buds ... then the lights went out altogether in Tasteville. I found the stuff usable only in the smallest quantities – dipping the tines of a fork into it for use in many pounds of chili or carne machada, but I saw Dominicans eat this stuff by the spoon like jam and stir great heaps of it into their soup.

A couple of ounces lasted me for years and it never went bad, it didn’t grow mold and it didn’t discolor and it didn’t weaken or loose that fresh taste. It just stayed what it was. I haven’t made it in years because I really don’t know where to get the necessary, extreme peppers and super strong Cilantro. Habanero peppers and Cilantro varieties aare available in many vegetable markets, but they are not for the Dominican market. I can handle Fairway’s Habaneros so they just can’t be that hot. Honestly, I don't know if I would make it again if I found the stuff.

Still there are those of you out there who can manage – nay, take pride in your ability - to consume HOT things so I offer the following. Ask a Trinidadian to go shopping uptown for you. You want peppers that he or she considers hot.  Say a pound or so. Ignore the ones in the supermarket in the plastic clam shells. You want a bunch of the Cilantro like herb. They will know what it is. You can supply the vinegar, citrus juice, garlic and sugar. You want to use just enough liquid to make the peppers flow when put through the Cuisinart. You pulse it and then let it run until you have produced a texture akin to ketsup. You do nothing to the peppers other than rinse them and pull off the stems. (You might want to wear surgical gloves for this - really, I would if you plan on using your hands in anyway that might come in contact with unprotected skin or eyes) Stay upwind of the machine while it runs. Allow the air to clear before opening the machine. Bottle the stuff and clean - wearing the gloves - the container used to process the stuff.  

Serve to asbestos mouthed people who really like it hot. Give them a beer* or something bubbly to flush their mouth with. Contain yourself.

*Beer actually helps cool and clear the palate. Milk is used in contests, but my experience is that the relief it provides is momentary. Maybe the same quantity  of beer - about a half gallon should do it - just numbs the pain better.