Powdered fire

This seems to be turning into a food blog. Not intentionally, it's just I love to cook and moreover to experiment with cooking, so that gives me something to write about. While there's a lot going on in our lives right now, I am not at the point of wanting to share some of it. And I got tired of writing (and reading) about religion. So cooking's a nice safe subject. Let's get on with it, yes?

The garden didn't produce like I thought it would this summer because it was cooler than usual (other than the record-breaking heat wave in early July that coincided with our A/C being broken for a few weeks). But that turns out to be a good thing, because if it had put out tomatoes and chilies like I thought it would then I'd be out peddling the damned things on street corners. So after making and freezing a bunch of pasta sauce, I started drying the tomatoes as well as tabascos, habaneros and jalapeños. And I ended up with a bunch of all four. What to do? Then I hit upon an idea, inspired by my dehydrated salsa mix I made for backpacking this summer (which turned out quite good, actually). How about a "hot salsa" type of seasoning powder? Think Mrs. Dash with some balls. So last night that's what I made.

Ingredients

All of the following are approximations (which you're used to from me by now).

• 2-3 cups dehydrated Roma tomato halves (very dry, not kinda-dry-but-still-chewy like sun-dried tomatoes)
• 1 cup dehydrated jalapeño halves
• 1 cup dehydrated habanero halves
• ½ cup dehydrated onion flakes
• 2 Tbs dehydrated garlic granules
• 2 Tbs dried oregano
• 1 Tbs ground cumin
• 1 Tbs salt

Directions

Split the ingredients into two or three batches. Put each batch in the blender, put the lid on and blend until it is all a powder. Empty results into a container and repeat with remaining batches. That's it. The above yielded about one and a half cups of powder.

Hint: If you've ever ground up dried chilies before, you know the resulting dust can cause explosive sneezing and irritation of the nasal passages. Let the batch sit in the blender with the cover on for a minute or so after you're done pulverizing to give the dust a chance to settle. It seemed to help.

The results are actually quite tasty, and quite hot. The concentrated tomato flavor hits your tongue first, and then the fire of the peppers comes right on through. It is good. I have enough of the ingredients to make another batch and am thinking of giving shakers of it away for Christmas presents, although most people I know aren't quite as much of a "hot head" as I am, so a little will go a long way.