Getting back to using some of the Tahiti Joe hot sauces was going to be pure joy, but where to start with so many from which to choose? When we did the original review some time ago, the Kumawanakilya sauce, being one of the hotter ones, became a house favorite, so I opted to try out another of the hotter sauces in the collection…being the Ahi of Kahuna XX hot sauce.

From the side of the bottle, the label reads:

Ahi of Kahuna XX with CHEESE
One day, while Tahiti’s Hot Sauces was cooling under a coconut palm, he heard voices in his head: his tastebuds were talking to him. They wanted him to make a sauce so “HOT” and flavorful, it would please any chilihead’s addiction for heat, and the tastebuds wanted it with cheese! So Tahiti’s Hot Sauces asked the great Polynesian Fire God for help, and at the urging of Tahiti’s sister Kimbalyawanalaya, Tahiti’s Hot Sauces gives you “Ahi of Kahuna XX Hot Sauce with cheese”
(her favorite sauce).

Taking a casual stroll through the list of ingredients, you can see this mondo list:

Ingredients: aged red peppers, red wine vinegar (contains sulfates), concentrated vegetable juices: (water, tomato, lemon, lemon oil, salt, dehydrated parsley, carrots, bell pepper, celery, ascorbic acid, malic acid), worcestershire, honey, key lime juice, clam juice, parmesan cheese, romano cheese, fresh carrots, fresh garlic in water, fresh habaneros, fresh onions, spices

It’s a mostly natural bunch of stuff, and I like to see the word fresh as much as possible on any list of hot sauce ingredients. In shelf-stable hot sauces, that taste can be tough to come by! A couple of other thoughts about the ingredients. First is the presence of clam juice, which is also another one that you don’t typically see used all that often. At first thought, it didn’t seem like an appetizing notion…but I remember that there was no real clam taste in any of the other sauces I’ve ever tried that’s had it. Also, using cheeses like romano and parmesan is another novel idea as well.. Not sure if this makes it destined to get poured over my spaghetti or not, but it certainly enticed me to see how well that meshed with the usual other hot sauce ingredients like the peppers, garlic, and vinegar.
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This is a great story out of Maryland, very close to where we used to live in the Baltimore area. This is yet another example of what a good homemade recipe and a little ingenuity will get you…with an investment, of course. The company is called Mama Vida’s, and they sell a variety of sauces, salsa, marinades, and other miscellaneous fare that the average chilehead might really like. Check ‘em out, and let them know we sent ya if you try their stuff and like it.

The excerpt below is from an article in the Owings Mills Times:

Family firm learns to think big time

Mechalis started out small, then grew

04/26/07
JULIA WILSON

The Mechali family, of Randallstown, started out small but has learned over the years to think big.

The Mechalis’ salsa-making company was geared toward selling jars of the condiment to a few local gourmet markets. Today, the company, Mama Vida’s, sells their own salsa, as well as pasta sauce and salad dressing, across the country and fills a niche market by providing manufacturing services to other entrepreneurs.

Miki and Toto Mechali started their Randallstown company, named after Toto’s mother, 14 years ago. Miki said she remembers when the company first asked the manager of a local gourmet shop to stock its salsa.

“Our knees were shaking,” she said. They told the manager he could keep the salsa jars and see if they sold, but he insisted on paying for them. “I thought he was just feeling sorry for us,” she said, but the jars sold and later that week he called for five cases.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Ordinary Naga Morich peppers not good enough for you? Need that extra added oomph to go along with the burn? Mark McMullan from The Chileman website & blog has put together a 45mL jar of concentrated Naga Morich that even a diehard chilehead might be forced to pause and think first before shoving a spoonful in his/her mouth. Mark has his listing on eBay. which you can see here:

Naga Morich Chilli Concentrate from www.thechileman.org

A nice looking jar full of capsaicin-lade Naga hell. What chilehead wouldn’t want a jar of that? Help Mark out and bid early and often.

For those of you fortunate enough to be on the list for the latest edition of the Defcon ZERO batches, the latest edition is now available. Here is the latest info from Defcon HQ:

ZERO HOUR IS UPON US!!!

The Defcon ZERO Batch #4’s are NOW AVAILABLE!!!

OK, the harvesting is complete! We have 90 (91 were created) of these beauties available. Please click on the link below, and fill out ALL requested information as requested. If any of the billing/shipping information is not correct, your Vial of Doom will go to the next person in line, so proofread everything before you send it. This is purely a first come, first serve basis, to make things fair. Also, this time around we are only accepting credit cards and Paypal (no e-checks) as methods of payment. Some of the checks for the last release took over a month to clear, and some didn’t clear at all. As you probably know it’s just myself and my wife running the show here, and I want to make it somewhat easy on ourselves on the accounting side with the inevitable onslaught on e-mails that are now going to start rolling in.

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Ok, that’s it, I’m done. I’m not going to look anymore, the pinnacle has been reached. I’ve found my new favorite streak sauce. Originally I thought A-1 was good, but no more, for I have discovered Three Hot Tamales Garlic Lovers Steak Sauce.

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For those of you out there who make your own homemade hot sauce, for personal or public use, this article from the Washingtonian.com shows you that if you make a sauce that lots of people like, then you can get the ball rolling and sell it to those who will enjoy it the most. An excerpt here:

While the District fought for voting rights on the Hill in recent weeks, a less publicized voting campaign was taking place downtown. At the corner of 15th and K streets, Pedro and Vinny’s burrito cart proprietor John Rider, who we profiled in our May issue, took name suggestions for his homemade mang-habanero hot sauce on a yellow poster board posted outside the cart. As we reported back in February, Rider got the thumbs-up from a Florida bottling plant to sell his recipe nationally, spawning a Pedro and Vinny’s sauce-naming challenge. Over the course of a few weeks, lunchers placed check marks and happy faces next to name ideas while waiting in line. “Burrito Juice” and “Mango-nero” got a few nods here and there but the winner, with over 30 votes, was “Mango Magma,” hands down.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Some exclusive news has become available to us through Dave Hirschkopf of Dave’s Gourmet:

THE NEXT U.S. PRESIDENT WILL BE
DECIDED BY HOT SAUCE?

Why vote at the ballot box with an untrustworthy electronic machine? Instead cast your vote by buying hot sauce. Dave’s Gourmet wants to help you with the democratic process by producing fun hot sauces featuring caricatures of all of the major presidential candidates. Dave’s will be tracking the race on their website. When you buy a bottle, it is a vote for that candidate. Dave’s doesn’t stop there. They have even added a couple of candidates. One is a well known person, Nunna Thebove, and the other is Dave. Will these dark horses beat the well-heeled professional politicians? Most importantly profits from these sales will be donated to charity.

The hot sauce itself is a delicious cayenne based sauce. The labels not only feature a caricature of the candidate, but include quotes from the candidate that they probably would like to take back.

Dave’s Gourmet is a ten time NASFT award winner who produces insanity hot sauces, salsas, drink mixes, and snacks. They also make Jump Up & Kiss Me Sauces and Dave’s Gourmet organic heirloom pasta sauces. Under their Palette Fine Foods subsidiary they produce exclusive jams, spice rubs, dessert sauces, and honeys. In their Chile Today Hot Tamale brand are chile powders and whole dried chiles. Dave has appeared numerous times on the Food Network and has written a cookbook Crazy from the Heat – The Dave’s Insanity Cookbook. Their website is www.davesgourmet.com.

Sounds like a winner to us. Not like George Bush was a winner or anything, so this might be a vast improvement over the Electoral College.

Haven’t heard too much from Blair for a while, so it was nice to get this message from him….

Dear ChiliPal,

Today I am proud to announce the Re-Birth Of Beyond Death Sauce. For those of you who have Been part of the Death Sauce Revolution since the early 90’s you already know of the story about Beyond Death. I only made a couple hundred cases or so. At that time; 1992, I wanted to make my sauce even hotter than After Death However, I could not afford to make a new label at that time, I could only afford to print Avery labels that said “Beyond” and hand apply them over the Word “After” Death on that label. The Sauce Was a Success. It later became what is now the World Famous “Sudden Death” with a New formula. The Eye on the Bottle was the Original design created for Death Sauce.

It has now been brought back in 2007 in four designs… some 15 years later. The formula has been recreated to the original version to the very best of my knowledge. Of course in the Early 90’s I had nothing more than formulas written on sheets of paper or whatever was in my reach… In any event. It is Hot, It has that wonderful hint of Chipotle and it makes one hell of a Collector Piece and of Course an amazing Sauce for all Your Chilihead needs……..

BlairLab: Our company is officially opening April 25th. However, for our chili pals - take a sneak peak at http://www.blairlab.com. FREE GIFT ENCLOSED WITH EVERY ORDER.

Enjoy It and Feel Alive

Your Chilipal,

Blair

A month or so ago the great guys over at Zane & Zack’s World Famous Honey Company sent me along their two products for review. It came with a great letter and an instruction set on how to use the sauces and on what to use them on. Right away they get high marks for presentation.

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Part three in the continuing drama of the transition from chile pepper hobbyist to full time grower… and the “Open Fields”.

The brilliant business plan that I had, discussed in parts one and two, that consisted of nothing more than “throw chiles in ground, see who’s interested when crop comes in” actually succeeded beyond all expectations. Under the old saying “if at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment” demand for chiles was rather brisk. Earning a living off of them was another matter entirely and will be saved for later. We’ll stick to the farming aspects here.

After several years of planting just a little more each year, I got to the point where I was actually planting quite a decent crop of chiles. It was measuring acres in size and encompassed many thousands of plants. In the early 90’s, 20,000 habanero plants constituted a measurable chunk of chiles, especially here in the Midwest. When I say “I” that didn’t necessarily mean me alone. I was renting the farmground and did hire a substantial amount of ‘Manuel labor’ in order to bring the crop in. My landlord was fantastic, lending me his crew when he had down time. Still, I was putting in some incredibly looong hours during the months of August, September, and October.

It didn’t take long to discover that one of the most trying things about farming was the complete lack of control one had over the most critical aspect of them all- the weather. One particular year almost put me out of business before I even really got started. You must remember that in making ‘farming decisions’ you are looking into a crystal ball several months in advance. Seed is ordered in November for the following year. The size of ground to be planted is set in stone by March when the seeds are turned over to the greenhouse folks to turn into plants. The plants are timed to be of the right size for a specific planting window, hereabouts generally running from May 25th to June 2nd. If the weather does not co-operate- ie monsoon rains for a month- the chiles can get into the ground *very* late and that pushes everything back. In this particular year the chiles did not get planted until late July, about the time I’m normally expecting to start harvest on some of the early varieties like Cayenne & Jalapeno. That was also the year we had a near record early freeze- 28 F on Sept 15th. That was the same year I rolled the dice and decided to gamble big time and expand the operation to 5 acres. On the morning of September 16th I was looking at 5 acres of rotting mush and thinking it was a tragic waste.

Seeing those chiles rotting after the frost got me to thinking. The chiles stay viable for about 24 to 48 hours after such an event. There were likely folks who would like to come and help themselves to whatever could be salvaged since there was no way I’d be able to get them all picked and processed. As a member of the ChileHeads email group, I put out a call announcing that whoever wanted could come over and help themselves to whatever they could pick. There were about a half-dozen people showed up and the “Open Fields” was born. In succeeding years, I would put out the call based on the frost predictions from the weather service- and we all know how reliable weather predictions can be I’d be emailing folks; ‘frost predicted, come get them’ and then retract it when the forecasters missed it by several degrees. “Okay, now they really mean it”.

With each passing year the event picked up a few more people and I began to realize the inconvenience of the last minute notices. About 5 years ago, I simply started picking a date at which I suspected I’d have most of the harvest in & folks could help themselves, irrespective of the forecasts. In the last few years, this progressed even further to simply planting a U-pick field just for the event.

Eventually, somehow, the FoodTV caught wind of this and were thoroughly intrigued with the idea of a “chilehead Woodstock” occurring in the wilds of Central Indiana. The sent film crews out twice to document this gathering of chileheads and get a bit of a taste of what the chilehead community is all about.

Describing the programs, outlining this years’ event, and publishing the steps you need to take in order to attend yourself will be the subject of the fourth and final part of this series

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