THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9409210055
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BROWN H. CARPENTER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 233 lines
MAYBE IT'S a rebellion against subtlety and seriousness. But a hot-sauce craze is firing up America drop by drop, dollop by dollop.
``Hot sauce is a dramatic culinary gesture,'' says Jennifer Trainer Thompson, author of ``Hot Licks: Great Recipes For Making and Cooking With Hot Sauces'' (Chronicle Books: $14.95). ``Soulful, jazzy, and slightly addictive, it will loosen your cooking style and add punch and flavor to a wide range of foods.''
Indeed.
Five years ago, Tim and Wendy Eidson began Mo Hotta-Mo Betta, a San Luis Obispo, Calif., mail-order business that specializes in hot sauces.
The Eidsons sent out 300 catalogs. This summer, they shipped out 200,000.
The Eidsons have a warehouse to handle the cases of bottled heat and offer more than 100 sauces.
``There was not much hot sauce excitement back then,'' Tim Eidson said recently by phone. ``We planned to serve a small niche.''
Thompson discovered hot sauces 14 years ago in the Bahamas. Stuck in an island bar while her boat was undergoing repairs, she liberally doused ``a pretty, pale-yellow sauce flecked with orange'' on some fritters.
The pain ``threatened to tear off the roof of my mouth,'' she recalls in her cookbook. Minutes later she went back for more.
Such is the lure of hot sauces. Thompson says the fiery condiments have a passionate following, not too different from the enthusiasm exhibited by wine lovers.
Hot sauces, like wine, are found all over the world, but seem particularly concentrated in the islands and lands abutting the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, extending into the American Southwest and Mexico.
In their Mo Hotta-Mo Betta catalog, the Eidsons give each of their scorching sauces a different description, handling adjectives with the best of the wine critics, as well as rating them: Mild, Medium, Hot and Very Hot.
Dr. J's Chile Elixir, a Hot offering, for instance, ``is a balanced, no-nonsense sauce with excellent depth, habanero nuances and a long finish.'' Hawaiian Passion also is rated Hot: ``The flavor of this fiery concoction of Hawaiian and Thai bird chiles is enhanced by the spicy taste of fresh ginger.'' AS HOT AS POSSIBLE
Hot sauces can be loosely categorized, but that's becoming less and less true. Most familiar to Americans are the thin, red Louisiana sauces, the best-selling being Tabasco. These products usually contain cayenne-type peppers, vinegar and salt.
Coming on strong are the sauces containing habanero peppers, reputedly the world's hottest. They are grown on the Yucatan Peninsula and in Central America. The Caribbean Scotch bonnet is a close relative and equally piquant.
The Central American habanero sauces are usually red and contain lime juice and minced carrots, although a particularly wicked green variety, Yucateco, can be found in some Latino markets.
The thick yellow Caribbean varieties are aptly described above by Thompson. Surprisingly, these torrid blends are easily the most addictive. In small amounts, they are very flavorful.
The real growth, however, is in the specialty sauces - blends cooked up by heat aficionados, restaurateurs and mad scientists much in the manner of micro-beer brewing.
These products dominate the Mo Hotta-Mo Betta catalog, and samples arrive daily in San Luis Obispo from sauce makers hoping their brews will be accepted in the next catalog. ``The cottage industries keep us in business,'' Tim Eidson said.
Peckerwood Hot Sauce is brewed by the New Dixie Diner in Port Salerno, Fla. Isla Vieques Mountain Herb Hot Sauce is blended by Jim and Diana Starke, New Englanders who settled on a Caribbean island and began a bottling operation, according to Eidson.
The trend is to make the sauces as hot as possible. Nine of the Mo Hotta-Mo Betta products contain the word ``hell,'' one out of Denver going by Pure Hell while the venerable El Paso Chile Co. of Texas markets Hell-Fire & Damnation. Other upfront high-temperature brands are Last Rites, Capital Punishment, Vampire and Satan's Revenge. NEIGHBORHOOD HEAT
In Hampton Roads, three pepper heads make and sell their own sauces.
Rowena Fullinwider, who markets a growing variety of specialty foods worldwide, has been bottling and selling Red Lightning Hot Sauce in Norfolk for four years. Billie Edwards, Rowena's product manager, says buyers at food shows kept asking company reps for a hot sauce.
Bob Buckman, who with his wife, Edye, owns Lendy's Cafe in Virginia Beach, and has been firing up the macho egos of Oceana jet jockeys and Dam Neck SEALs for years with his hot chicken wings, is marketing Buckman's mouth searing sauces (Hot, Killer and Suicide).
Tracy Anderson, co-founder of the local Hot Pepper Lovers Club and owner of Tracy's Clam and Oyster Bar in Norfolk's East Ocean View, has rented a warehouse to brew Tracy's Virginia Red Hot Sauce, long served to his restaurant customers.
If you're marketing a hot sauce, it's wise to contact Chip Hearn, owner of the Starboard Restuarant in Dewey Beach, Del. He claims to have the largest collection of sauces in the world - 2,300 varieties at last count.
His standing offer of a free calypso-style meal to anyone presenting him with a new sauce brings in several new bottles a week.
``I got two from Guatemala today,'' Hearn said recently by phone. Just a year ago he had about 1,100 sauces.
Hearn sells the local sauces among the 500 or so offered in his store next to the restaurant. A typical shop in his chain of Pepper's outlets in the upper Delmarva coastal area sells 150 types.
``On a trip to Trinidad last winter, I brought back 119 sauces I didn't have,'' he boasted. In addition, he brews six of his own commercial sauces. OFF THE SCALE
No hot sauce essay is complete without mentioning Dave Hirschkop, inventor of Dave's Insanity Sauce, the hottest sauce in the world both in fire and in sales. At Mo Hotta-Mo Betta, they vend it by the case.
``It's too hot for me,'' confessed Tim Eidson. Pour a drop on a nacho chip, put it in your mouth and you'll think someone put a book of matches on your tongue and lighted it.
Hirschkop is a Virginian - he grew up in Alexandria - and once operated a restaurant in College Park, Md. ``I used to have a late-night crowd. They were raucous, some football players. My hot sauce calmed them down. I kept making it hotter and hotter.''
The stuff he hustles today is laden with hot-pepper extract. ``It's a cooking sauce,'' Hirschkop said. ``It's not to dribble on your eggs. Put a dash in your chili, spaghetti sauce or a stew.''
If you want to taste-test hot sauces, Eidson recommends shaking a dash onto a plain soda cracker or a saltless corn chip. ``However, hot sauce tends to wreck your sense of taste,'' he said, ``so you can't really tell much about the second one.''
Also, some of the very hot sauces such as Dave's shouldn't be handled this way. Chili peppers, even in liquid form, can damage the mouth and esophagus, particularly if you're not used to them. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
Americans are warming up to hot sauces in a big way. Hundreds of
varieties on the market harness the powerful flavors of hot
peppers.
Graphics
GET YOUR HOT SAUCE
Here's a look at some hot sauces that offer something out of the
ordinary.
LOCAL
Buckman's Best Buffalo Wing Sauce. Made by Bob Buckman in his
restaurant, Lendy's, at 1581 General Booth Blvd., Virginia Beach.
Its smoky flavor has plenty of authority. Comes in three
intensities: Hot, Killer and Suicide.
Rowena's Red Lightning Hot Sauce. A tasty, medium-hot,
tomato-flavored product of Rowena's Kitchen, 758 W. 22nd St.,
Norfolk.
Tracy's Virginia Red Hot Sauce. A tough-guy offering from ex-cop
Tracy Anderson, who owns Tracy's Clam and Oyster Bar at Bay Point
Marina in Norfolk's East Ocean View. If it burns your tongue, read
Anderson his Miranda rights.
FROM ELSEWHERE
Melinda's Hot Sauce. A habanero-pepper base subtly tempered with
lime juice and a pinch of ground carrot. Made in Costa Rica and
available in most supermarkets. The bottles range from Hot to XXXtra
Hot.
Tabasco Sauce. A bottled aristocrat sold all over the world. A
drop or two puts zip in a Bloody Mary and spreads a warm glow
throughout a bowl of chicken soup.
Matouk's hot sauces. This Trinidad bottler makes an addictive
line of Caribbean combustibles, all thick and amber - like marmalade
- and combining Scotch bonnet peppers with tropical fruits or
mustard. The mixtures are explosive. Start with a half-teaspoon
on some black beans and rice. A fairly common item in ethnic
grocery stores, such as La Tienda, 190 Boggs Ave., Virginia Beach
(off Bonney Road).
Cajun Power Spicy Hot Sauce. Medium-hot liquid from Louisiana
with garlic and tomatoes adding a vegetable-garden flavor to the
usual cayenne heat. Available in the Eidsons' Mo Hotta-Mo Betta
catalog. Try a drop or two in some gazpacho.
Dat'l Do-It Devil Drops. This brew, from St. Augustine, Fla.,
merges the fiery datil pepper, grown exclusively in that part of the
Southeast, with passion fruit and mango. It's hot and sweet, good
for spicing up a fruit salsa. Order from the specialty catalogs or
call 1-800-HOT-DATL and have a bottle sent to you from Florida.
Bufalo brand hot sauces. Ole, Mexico's finest line of
condiments. La Tienda usually stocks the chipotle blend, using
smoked jalapeno peppers, and the red jalapeno mixture, a mildly hot,
flavorful sauce. The chipotle product is definitely not mild and
puts spunk into a barbecue sauce.
McCutcheon's Three Pepper Lemon Hot Sauce. Sold at the Virginia
Beach Farmer's Market. A very tangy concoction, including black
pepper, that mixes well with yogurt, mayonnaise and minced fresh
garlic to form a superior dip or salad dressing. Start with a 1/4
cup each of yogurt and mayo, one garlic clove and a teaspoon of
McCutcheon's. Let it sit a half-hour in the fridge. Add more hot
sauce if it's too mild.
Dave's Insanity Sauce. This stuff is to regular hot sauce what
grain alcohol is to beer. Good stuff to serve your ex-spouse or
guests who have worn out their welcome. Dave cackles at all this
but says one drop is perfect for firing up a pot of chili or
spaghetti sauce. Available in catalogs and specialty shops, or
directly from Dave at (800) 758-0372.
Brown Carpenter
WHERE THERE'S FIRE
Following are some sources for hot sauces:
Mo Hotta-Betta, P.O. Box 4136, San Luis Obispo, Calif. 93403.
Call (800) 545-8389. More than 100 sauces listed and described,
plus other chili pepper products such as salsa, seasonings and
barbecue sauces. About 50 products are added with each new catalog.
Starboard Restaurant, 2009 Highway 1, Dewey Beach, Del. 19971.
Call (800) 998-FIRE. Owner Chip Hearn is unchallenged so far in his
claim to the largest hot-sauce collection in the world - 2,300 types
at last count. He sells some by mail order.
Flamingo Flats, P.O. Box 441, St. Michaels, Md. 21663. Call (800)
468-8841. A small store in a picturesque Eastern Shore community,
Flamingo Flats sells 300 hot sauces. ``One room is full of them,''
boasts manager Izzi Sevco. ``We even do tastings.'' A catalog is
being prepared. Drop by the store at 406 Talbot St. if you're
driving or yachting through.
These companies also offer sauces:
The Old Southwest Trading Co., P.O. Box 7545, Albuquerque, N.M.
87194. (800-748-2861).
Pendery's, 1221 Manufacturing, Dallas, Texas 75207.
(800-533-1870).
Salsa Express, P.O. Box 3985, Albuquerque, N.M. 87190.
(800-43-SALSA).
by CNB