Playing with Fire

My restaurant like a lot of others has a big variety of hot sauces available as a condiment, they are good but sometimes that's just not enough and I have to make a batch as well. There is a trend now in making very spicy sauces, so that's what I did. The searing heat from peppers comes from capsaicin which is a compound found in chili peppers, there is a scale for measuring the hotness of chili peppers which is known as the Scoville scale. The hottest chili available now is a little known pepper called Naga Jolokia or better known as Ghost chili with a Scoville measurement of over 1000,000, that is just way too hot and asking for a lot of trouble. Number two on the hot list and the pepper I used is the Habanero chili or scotch bonnet on a scale of between 100,000-350,000. By comparison the jalapeno is much "cooler" at 2,500-8,000. I made the fiery sauce by simply grilling habaneros, tomatoes and onions, next simmering them with garlic, white vinegar and salt till soft. Then blended till smooth and strained. People in the restaurant are a little scared to try it at first but when they do, find that it has as much flavor as heat.