I mentioned in the last post about how I'm not overly fond of the overly bloke-y trend in naming chilli sauces - at some point I might get round to putting together a commentary post on the issue - and this sauce (and many of the others like it) come across as kinda cheesy. Still, it's not about the name, it's about the sauce.
It's also worth highlighting that the CPC a company that seems to principally grow many varieties of chillis (check out their awesome array of seeds and powders for sale), and has been placing more and more emphasis on producing really hot chilli sauces without using extract (a la the super-hot ranges from Dave's Gourmet, Blair Lazar and Hot Headz). Their rumoured success in breeding a super-hot variant of Naga (the so-called "Viper") will certainly help them in this endeavour. But how does the Beast weigh up?
Tasting Notes: The first thing that hits me is the sweet, spicy flavour; fruity with a strong cinammon note and a pleasant undercurrent of vinegar. It smells, basically, like a english chutney. The sauce was runnier than I was expecting (given I was expecting chutney after that lovely smell!), but the flavour really doesn't let it down. One of the key ingredients in this sauce is mango, and that really forms the sweet and sour core of the flavour. The spices are strong and pleasant too. One minor gripe is that the flavour is a little raw, but heck, it's a sauce - very few of them stand up well to necking the bottle. The chilli comes in quite late, strong and low, but stays with you.
What's it Good For: It's got a complex, spicy, chutney-ish flavour that would be completely wasted in cooking, so that's out from the start. I've used it on cheese-on-toast, but it'd be worth going for a mild cheese so that you get the most of it's flavour. I've also found it's quite nice added to a simple salad dressing to give it a bit of kick - probably best with something like a balsamic dressing that doesn't have a complex flavour of it's own. Like chutney, it's good on cooked meats and in sandwiches, but for me it suffers for being just a bit too runny. Given it has enough of a flavour to stand on it's own, the best thing I've found for it is leftover boiled rice (probably a bit much to make a whole meal out of, but with a mixed into a tablespoon or so of rice makes a very nice side). It's a versatile condiment, and I'm very sad at how fast I'm getting through it!
Final Thoughts: I really love this sauce. Given it was filler on my order, I'm really pleased at discovering it, and next to the slightly disappointing Terminator/Naga Viper, I'm really happy with it. (May even buy again, if I get the chance!) The only niggle flavour-wise is how raw the vinegar and spices taste. I noticed this about the Terminator too; both sauces leave me with the feeling that these are "home-made" small batch sauces (certainly compared with bigger labels like Blair's or Tabasco). If there were some way to take the edge off it without killing the lovely flavour, this sauce would be more or less perfect.
There is, however, one nagging problem which I really have to flag up. Upon re-reading Darth Naga's take on this excellent sauce from December 2009, I found this:
I undid the bottles cap and held it to my nose [...] Naga. Thats it, seriously! I can just smell pure naga coming from this bottle.I've been sniffing this sauce again for the last half hour, and chilli is definitely not the dominant smell coming off it. This isn't a bad thing, of course - as I've said, I love it - but it's hard to escape the fact that this seems to be a different sauce from the one that D.N. is reviewing. Also, after the stern warnings on the side of the bottle ("Extremely hot... Use where extreme heat and flavour are required" "BEWARE!! Once eaten this will hurt") I have to say I was disappointed by how mild this sauce was. This sauce is probably comparable in heat to Tabasco. At first I thought it might be because I was tasting it straight after this, but subsequent tastings have disabused me of that notion - my bottle of this sauce is just not that hot, despite boasting that it contains "13 fresh Naga Morich per bottle". Again, CPC is primarily a chilli farm with a sideline in making sauces with their produce: I'm not sure if this points to variation in the heat of their Naga's or batch variation between sauces, but it's worth saying that when it comes to heat, your mileage may vary. Caveat emptor and all that. But hey, if all you want is heat, this probably isn't the sauce for you anyway.
The Verdict: This is a really great, flavoursome sauce, and definitely worth the postage cost.
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