Submerge the ancho in a pot of hot water and soak until soft, about 20 minutes. Chop ancho finely and reserve. Roast and peel the Dutch chile. Stem, seed, and finely chop the chile.

Stem and seed the Scotch bonnets, leaving the inner membranes (and, if desired, a few seeds). Combine the Scotch bonnets with onion and garlic in a food processor and process until very finely chopped. Combine lemon juice, rum, and vinegar in a nonreactive pan and bring to a boil. Pour liquid into processor, add the oregano and Dutch chile, and process lightly. Add the ancho teaspoon by teaspoon, processing briefly in between, pulsing only enough to obtain a smooth, yellow-orange sauce, highlighted by red flecks. (Overprocessing or adding too much ancho will result in a redder sauce, which is also quite beautiful.) Refrigerated, this sauce will keep 6 weeks. 2 cups.

although the Scotch bonnet peppers appear in extremis for those who care about flavor but can't get enough heat. The recipe is not named after the Navy fighter plane that starred in Desert Storm, but after the sixteen chiles that create a heat storm of their own in this sauce. In other words, this is a sauce for chileheads whose predictable reaction to all hot sauce is, "oh, it wasn't that hot, " because the F-16 takes no prisoners.

Though many Carribean sauces feature one chile type, I also used an ancho and a fresh red chile; I like the fuller tones of the ancho, and the red chile adds a lingering heat to the hit-and-run Scotch bonnet. Perhaps just as important, the red chile contributes brilliant crimson flecks to an otherwise golden sauce, which I like to think of as little warning flags signaling the red-hot heat to come.

From the Chile-Heads recipe list. Downloaded from Glen's Mm Recipe Archive, http://www. Erols. Com/hosey.