California Smile Jalapeno Hot Sauce

Hot red chilies have finally arrived at the Farmer's Markets. Saturday Plotnik bought these Thai "Smile" chiles at Allemany, called "Smile," the lady said because "dey so hot dey make a people smiles." Then when he got home he checked the chiles to discover too many were already drying out. To make the very tastiest Louisiana-style Hot Sauce, you need the freshest chiles. So yesterday he went down to City Hall and found red jalapenos. It doesn't really seem to matter what kind of red hot chiles you use in terms of taste. Classic Tabasco Sauce is made with Avery Island Tabascos, but every culture has a hot sauce made from whatever hot chile they've got growing nearby.

So this year's hot sauce will be called California Smile Jalapeno Hot Sauce and if it's anywhere as good as last year's we will all be very happy.

What you do is you cut the tops off the chiles, chop them all up in the food processor (open ALL windows please), then blend half by themselves and half with a lot of garlic cloves. Then put the mash without garlic in one crock and the mash with garlic in another crock. You add kosher salt and wait as long as you can while they all ferment together. Plotnik usually allows one month, until the smell gets pretty intense when he takes the covers off the crocks. (The McIllheney Company, who makes Tabasco Sauce, ages their mash for three years in oak barrels, like they're aging wine.)

When you're done aging the mash, you add distilled white vinegar, let that sit another week or two, then strain the liquid into bottles. Zingo true 'dat.

This year, Plotnik is making twice as much as he did last year, and hopes to make up four different hot sauces as the chiles become available. They will go into small bottles and be given to selected teflon-coated family members who adore hot sauce. The thing about this stuff is once you start putting it on one thing you try it on another and before long it is on the table at every meal.

*** CAUTION *** CAUTION ***

However! There is one thing to make sure you remember, if you are making this sauce, and you are male. You can imagine what it is. Please be careful not to forget to wash the hot chile off your hands BEFORE you touch any sensitive part of your body. Do this first, no matter HOW much you think you have to pee.

Or else you will end up screaming like the Great Plotnik, running around the house and then stripping off your clothes and jumping into the shower, only to discover that water, especially hot water, just makes it worse, and so you figure you'll try using shampoo, but then forget, in your distraction, to take the shampoo off your hands before you rub both of your eyes, so now you've got chile chaos down there and shampoo chaos up there and don't say The Great Plotnik didn't warn you.