As your ass’t food editor and private WATS line to the terre d’edibles I wanted to alert you to certain new developments in the area of hot sauces. (Just yelled at my yellow Labrador who is in the garden eating corn on the cob without salt and butter. Yesterday it was a dozen eggs and a pound of butter left out on the counter.) But before we get to the hot sauce let me make a few divergent points.
- No one is allowed to use cocaine before the meal when I cook. Afterward, OK. Cocaine creates a sort of bubblegum nimbus that slaughters the palate and sensuous capacities, in addition to shrinking the wee-wee and tearing holes in the social fabric.
- A warning to certain of your left-leaning, spit-dribbling, eco-freak readers: I kill much of what I eat; ducks, quail, deer, grouse, woodcock, trout, salmon, bluegills, the lowly carp (Hunanese hot and crispy carp). These people should know that technically speaking their bean sprouts scream when they are jerked out by their roots. Everything living ends up as a turd of sorts.
- Numerologically I can’t end up on an even number (2) for private reasons. Spend as much as possible on good food and wine. Last night I drank a 1949 Latour and a 1953 Richebourg because I was depressed about returning to Glitzville (Hollywood). I wept over a Save the Children ad. Then as the great wine surged through my proud veins and emptied into my brainpan I had a long satisfying fantasy about Meryl Streep. “How can I help but love you, Jim,” she said, “I’ve read your ten books and eaten your ten best meals. I guess you could say I’m yours.” Then I slipped on my fifty-dollar Key West pig mask and stalked her pealing laughter through the penthouse etc. . . . Her husband was conveniently absent, having become waylaid on a turnip expedition in Washington Heights. O Meryl!
Anyway, hot sauce au point: Richard Schweid’s magnificent Hot Peppers (Madrona Publishers, $6.95) is worth a hundred times its price. Yes the book is worth six hundred ninety five dollars, the exact amount of a quarter ounce of you-know-what. Luckily I got my copy free. Unfortunately, Schweid, the sage of Cajuns and Capsicum, is ignorant of Clancy’s Fancy, a hot sauce manufactured by Colleen Clancy, 630 Oxford, Ann Arbor, MI 48108. Ms. Clancy is a lass steeped in exotic Acadiana. I’ve never met her but her sauce is stopper and neck above the hundreds of sauces I’ve collected from Ethiopia to Ecuador, from cold Leningrad to the steamy fuck-crazed alleys of Bangkok where slant oysters are far more numerous than the fabled Belons, Bon Secours, or the champ Apalachicolas. Jimmy Buffett, the minstrel, uses it in his duck-crab-shrimp gumbo. Sam Lawrence, the publishing tycoon, uses Clancy’s during Key West exercise routines. I use it copiously. Example—a Caribbean stew.
3 lb PORK SPARERIBS (cut to 1-rib pieces)
1 CHICKEN (cut into serving pieces)
2 lb HOT ITALIAN SAUSAGE
½ cup TOMATO PASTE
7 cloves of GARLIC
3 tbsp FAUCHON BASIL VINEGAR
7 tsp CLANCY’S FANCY
1 cup CHICKEN STOCK
3 tsp LEMON JUICE
1 tsp SUGAR
7 dashes WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE
1 tbsp CHILI POWDER
1 tbsp PAPRIKA
1. Place spareribs in large Dutch oven and cover with water. Cook for 20 minutes, discard water.
2. Place chicken pieces in bottom of Dutch oven and cover with spareribs and pieces of sausage. Add onions.
3. Mix all other ingredients in a bowl and pour over mélange.
4. Bake covered for 1 hour and 45 minutes at 300. Spoon off excess fat or suck it off with a straw.
Do not change or substitute! Above my desk hang a crow wing and a pink rubber piglet with a green drake trout fly stuck in its ass, and a coyote tooth in its mouth. I’ve written a new novel called Warlock. You tamper with my recipes at your peril!