The World According to Chuck

To real capsaicin junkies — and there are at least two of you, besides me, I know — our passion for the hot stuff is proven by our failures. The men are separated from the boys not by wuss talk of sweaty brows or having to drink gallons of iced tea afterwards (yeah, like that’s a good idea, doofus), but by those times when we just had to stop eating. It’s possible to reach some sort of pepper nirvana but there are limits to human tolerance, and that’s what I’m talking about. Sometimes you fly too close to the sun, and only a fool goes further. Some places men were just not meant to go.

Aside from that, though, we’re always looking for more heat. Cameron and I got into this conversation in Boston, and eventually he rounded up some sauce from an Italian restaurant (capsaicin has no cuisine, or country; the usual suspects are Mexican and Thai, but really I’ve found good peppers in all sorts of food, and it works with all sorts of food). I dripped my calzone into it and I was happy.

It’s really what I’m after, these days, in food. Heat. I could easily become a herbivore as long as I’m allowed to add jalapenos to my salad or whatever. True heat seekers aren’t looking for taste, texture or smell, not really; we seek a transformative experience. In my perfect capsaicin fantasy, I finish my meal in the shower, weeping copiously. It rarely happens but I dream.

The other day, then, just eyeballing the “hispanic” section of my grocery store on the off chance that some buyer got a good deal and/or an upgrade in imagination, I saw a bottle of hot sauce that said, “HOT!!” Not that I’m normally swayed by advertising, but it looked like it had possibilities. So I bought a bottle for a buck and it was good, some nice heat, but those 6 ounces or so didn’t last me long, since I tend to put hot sauce on everything (including cereal and my forearm, just for lickin’).

That’s when I slapped myself on the forehead, partly to make sure I had beads of sweat there but also because I can just be so stupid. Twenty cents an ounce is a steep price to pay for essentially pepper puree with vinegar and a little tomato paste.

So the project began.

I had to wait for a night alone, since a quick peek at the Internet told me that blanching the peppers in boiling vinegar first was a good beginning. Vinegar steam is not only potent but sort of toxic, if you hang around the stove too long, so I didn’t want to risk injuring John or Julie on a cellular level if I could help it. Tonight, as it turned out, she was at the local high school watching “Guys and Dolls” and John had crashed for the evening, so I had the lab to myself.

And it was as simple as it sounded. I avoided recipes because the first few I read said to seed the peppers first, so they obviously weren’t serious. After blanching, I shoved them into the Magic Bullet with the tomato paste, a few spices I had hanging around (including my own, homemade chili powder and cumin, but that’s all I’m saying), some of the vinegar and water and there you go.

I used jalapenos because I happened to have several on the countertop in a plastic bag, needing to be used. Next time I’m adding some habaneros, but this worked. I made a few adjustments, added some water, got a consistency that was a tad thick but not bad, not bad at all, and then I dipped the edge — just the edge — of a tortilla chip in the sauce for my first taste.

Hmm. A little sweet; might need to be diluted a little. And fresh tomatoes would be better than paste, probably. I should have also put a couple of grinds of black pepper in, and a little cayenne would have been interesting. But, you know, first time, no measurements, just stuff I had around the house, a few minutes of work and now several cups of sauce. Not bad at all. Maybe just one more chip, with just a teensy bit more sauce…

That was 30 minutes ago.

I am still sweating.

It’s a good kind of sweat.

The nirvana sweat.

Don’t bother asking me for the recipe. Maybe later, when I get it perfect, but this was less cooking than alchemy. I took an ordinary Saturday night and turned it into gold. Liquid gold. Sort of red gold.

And maybe you’re not one of us, those who seek out our inner thermometer and aim to mess with it, so this won’t interest you. Fair enough.

But I made me some hot sauce tonight, all alone, and I couldn’t help myself but I had a fair bit of it, and my hair stuck to my forehead and my shirt stuck to the back of my neck, my eyes watered and my tongue danced and my nose sort of tingled, and I stood in the kitchen and stretched out my arms and said what all creators say when they’ve done good.

“It’s ALIVE.”

It is, too. I may take a shower tonight after all.