Review: Scorpion Gourmet Hot Sauce

The Caribbean is known for its pepper sauce. Each country and each household has its own recipe and "secrets" for making this fiery blend of Scotch Bonnet pepper. Pepper sauce can be so hot (and flavourful) that it can make you gasp and cry involuntarily. The burn stings as it coats your tongue; you press your tongue to the roof of your mouth for some relief but you only succeed in spreading the heat for a full-on mouth burn.

One would think that with such pain you would not want to dip in to more pepper sauce with your next fork or spoonful of food, but, completely bewitched, you dip, slather and smear on more pepper sauce and continue eating. It's fierce heat yes, but gosh, the pain is pleasurable and you just can't seem to get enough of that mouthwatering (literally), flavourful sauce.

Taste as we know, is subjective, especially when it comes to certain things where everyone feels that their version is the best or most authentic. With something as highly-prized as pepper sauce, preferences can range from colour to texture to heat to method of preparation to added ingredients. Therefore, when I was approached to review Scorpion Gourmet Hot Sauce, I only agreed on the condition that I am frank and unbiased. It is important to note that this is an unpaid review. The hot sauces were supplied by the company.

Here in the region when we say pepper sauce, we mean something very specific - a sauce made exclusively of very hot peppers (usually scotch bonnet). When we see the words hot sauce on a label we automatically presume it to be a mixture of hot peppers and other ingredients blended to make a different kind of "pepper sauce". And when you add the word "gourmet" in front of hot sauce, you have to know that we are speaking of something different from what we Caribbeans traditionally know as pepper sauce. This is not a criticism, it is an observation.

Made primarily for the North American market, Scorpion Gourmet Hot Sauce offers a taste of the flavour of the well-known scotch bonnet without the pain mentioned in the first two paragraphs of this post. I say this for 2 reasons: when it comes to consumption, West Indian pepper sauce is taken in small quantities given the potency of the heat. A hot sauce on the other hand, such as the Scorpion Gourmet Hot Sauce (which comes in 3 versions - hot, medium and mild) can be taken in much more generous helpings based on your tolerance for heat.

Scorpion Gourmet Hot Sauce is made of scotch bonnet peppers, carrots, tomatoes, mangoes, vinegar, salt, lime juice, citric acid and spices. It is a hot sauce. The 3 versions in which the sauce comes are differentiated by the colour-coded sticker at the top of each cap. Red is for hot, green is for medium and black is for mild. The sauce varies in consistency as it goes from hot to medium to mild. Mild is the thickest for a very simple reason, less pepper is added to the sauce, therefore the increased addition of the other ingredients thickens the sauce. Don't be fooled though, the mildest still carries heat.

I asked two fellow pepper-heads to assist me with the taste-testing of the hot sauce and here is what we found:

• Hot (red sticker) - has a full-body flavour of the scotch bonnet. At first there are subtle notes of sweetness but that quickly disappears as the heat begins to build gradually, but not to an unbearable place (well, not if you like heat). With dairy such as milk or yogurt or any dairy-based beverage or dessert, the heat quickly goes away. The quick relief makes you want to keep eating the hot sauce.

• Medium (green sticker) - still has a lot of flavour of the pepper but you are beginning to notice the acidic ingredients.

• Mild (black sticker) - with this version you are tasting more of the other ingredients such as the carrots, tomatoes etc. In this version, the vinegar is more pronounced and again, both of these observations are for obvious reasons - less pepper, more of everything else. We all agreed that we would use this version to introduce people to heat.

• The sauce is highly aromatic with floral notes from the pepper. It is smooth in consistency, completely pureed. We all loved smelling and eating the hot sauce.

• Unlike the more traditional West Indian pepper sauces - thicker with more texture and almost exclusively made of peppers - that you can add to make things like a curry paste, I won't add Scorpion Gourmet Hot Sauce simply because I think it would be wasted (and it can impact on the overall flavour of what you are making depending on the quantity used). The SGHS should only really be used as a condiment. Used this way, you will be able to truly appreciate tastiness of the sauce.

Personally, I think the sauce would be ideal to toss with fried chicken wings as one would when making buffalo chicken wings. The vinegar and acid in SGHS would complement the wings really well. The range of the sauce also makes it easy to make your hot wings from hot to mild.

My taste-testers and I had the hot sauce with fried fish, fish cakes, french fries, sandwiches and with various meals. We enjoyed it best when we were eating finger-foods or bar-foods. What we did not like is when we ate the sauce with foods that we would normally eat with pepper sauce (rice and peas, fried rice, chowmein, rice and sautéed vegetables, stews). The vinegary-ness of the sauce was heightened and impacted on the flavour of the food. It was a bit too acidic. This is the main reason why I would recommend the sauce be used as part of a dip (mixed in or as is), something to shake or smear on to food.

Based in Texas, Scorpion Gourmet Hot Sauce recently won 1st place with the Hot (red) version at Zest Fest in Dallas (Asian style).

SGHS ships all across the US, Canada and the UK. You can buy the sauce online or at one of the vendors listed here.

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An Inspired Departure - Caribbean Belle WEDDINGS

I find inspiration all around me. As I often say to my students, ideas can come from anywhere and they are all around us, we just have to be in tune with our senses. See and look. Hear and listen. Read and understand. Taste and savour. Touch and feel.

On this blog, I write about food and the way it relates to the Caribbean but in this post, I am happy to share with you another dimension to the multiculturalism of the Caribbean that is warmly represented through Caribbean Belle Weddings.

There’s a new magazine gracing news and magazine stands all across Trinidad and Tobago – Caribbean Belle Weddings. This latest publication comes from the creative team behind the popular, quarterly women and lifestyle magazine, CaribbeanBelle, produced and headed by the wife and husband duo – Aliyyah Eniath and Ronald Hosein.

Congratulations on winning the Silver Addy Award for Best Overall Magazine Design from the Caribbean Advertising Federation (CAF) 2013 Addy Awards!

The magazine is indeed beautiful and a work of art. The cover does exactly what any top-notch publication should do – draw you in, make you stop and reach for it. A photograph of a gorgeous bride covers the length of the cover, top to bottom and positioned dead center. What is even more appealing is that the cover is not embellished with sub-headings. The only text is the name of the magazine spread across the top of the magazine. I don’t know if it was an intentional marketing ploy or not, but having the cover void of sub-headings immediately prompts you to get the magazine so that you can peruse it at your leisure.

Cover photographer Gary Jordan does an outstanding job in capturing the bride her element – alluring, confident, composed, playful and striking.

It’s easy to see why the magazine got its award. The layout and design is not only attractive and appealing, it is also not cluttered. The text, fonts and their sizes are easy to read. The colour scheme for each story and section is vibrant and very reminiscent of the Caribbean.

Turn the glossy cover of Caribbean Belle Weddings and the contents-page gets you happy, especially if you are a bride-to-be. Everything seems to be covered from budgeting for your wedding to preserving your dress. The magazines are full of useful and meaningful advice, stories, suggestions and recommendations, especially since they are all within a Caribbean context and aimed at a Caribbean audience. The information makes sense.

Caribbean Belle Weddings is not just about a list of things to do before, during and after your wedding, there are many real stories about real people. As I read some of the proposals I found myself saying, “Awwww…” often; like when Brad proposed to Alydia (Vol 1True Love in Pink) with the ring his grandfather used to proposed to his grandmother and his dad to his mother.

I’d recommend Caribbean Belle Weddings to anyone getting married and to wedding photographers too. Actually, if you are into art in any form, you will find the magazine interesting. For brides-to-be I would suggest getting back-issues too because they are chock-full of good information and ideas - for example, how to keep your guests happy instead of grumpy when the photo-shoot has gone into overdrive. The invaluableness of hiring a wedding planner, and there is even advice for those with do-it-yourself (DIY) in their DNA – creating your own enchanted garden for your wedding.

Another thing that’s fantastic about Caribbean Belle Weddings is that it shows the multicultural mix of the Caribbean. At the same time, you get to learn of the customs and traditions from these various cultures. There’s Laura and Devin’s Hindu and Roman Catholic wedding celebrations. Then there is JoMarie and Jonas’ wedding with its Arabic influence. JoMarie was gifted with earrings bought by her parents and her future in-laws as is done in Arabic tradition. It is a custom that the bride be dressed in jewellery from both families.

While weddings are all about tradition, it was exciting to see many of the brides and grooms stepping out-of-the-box, so to speak when it came to choosing the colour themes for their big day. Samantha and Pernell’s Peacock Pizazz was bold and inspiring. They chose shades of blue and purple reminiscent of the feathers of a peacock – blue and purple Chinese lanterns, sea-blue table runners, and purple orchids with aubergine accents. Love it!

Of course there is the usual 8 – 10 page spread of models in various wedding dresses and styles, including trends.

There was one feature that I was curious about called, “trashthe dress” – a style of wedding photography that contrasts elegant clothing with an environment in which it is out of place. You can read more about ithere. As a photographer, I enjoyed the underwater photography by photographer Ivan Luckie.

Caribbean Belle Weddings magazine is available at news and magazine stands all across Trinidad and Tobago. It is also available online at Barnesand Noble and you can sign up for a subscription.

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