When I lived in Bangkok, I had a neighbor who was Thai who used to cook very hot food. One day I went over and she
asked if I wanted to eat with her and I said sure, so she said she was going to prepare a special “farang” version for
me that was less hot than her own. Don’t do that, I said. I can take it. I love hot food.
I do love hot food. I did take it. But the red curry she prepared WAS hot, DAMN hot, and while I ate the whole thing,
I confess I sat there sweating and trying to smile as my lips felt like they were peeling off my head and my tongue
felt like someone was using it to test an electric Tazer.
All this is a long way to lead up to a new sauce called
“16 Million Reserve” that I don’t think I could ever
eat. The sauce is 30 times hotter than the spiciest pepper and 8,000 times more fiery than Tabasco. Diners who wish to
try the stuff – I’m not making this up – must sign a disclaimer recommending “protective gloves and eye wear”. To me
this is not a sauce to be used for eating, this is a sauce to be used in hand to hand combat. The name, incidentally,
comes from its score on the chilli heat measure, the Scoville Index.
Tihs stuff scores 16 million units, while a Habanero, a spicy pepper by any measure, measures just 350,000.