Why do we love chilli?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
As a French expat in London, I find the British crazy in love with chilli. I'm unfortunately not, and it's a daily struggle when grocery shopping or eating out because it will rear its ugly spicy head everywhere you least expected it : from soup to confectionery, nothing seems off limits!
With a few notable exceptions, I liken the use of chilli in cuisine to gratuitous violence in movies : a lazy fix for bland meals that otherwise wouldn't stand on their own feet. A smokescreen of burnt tastebuds to hide behind. A pain that I'm aware (but can't understand why) many people enjoy inflicting unto themselves.
Sorry for the (slightly tongue in cheek) harsh words : I have an axe to grind with chilli ever since I walked into the confectionery aisle of my local supermarket for the first time, shortly after I moved here.
Naively looking for my standard French/Belgian fare of dark chocolate with roasted almonds, hazelnut, or rice, I found nothing of the sort. Instead, what they had on offer was perfectly good chocolate laced with Wasabi, of all things ! Wasabi ! And yes, you guessed it, chilli.
I suppose that's the same sinking feeling British expats in France experience the first time they hear French rock'n'roll / hip-hop on the radio.
Tyler Cowen is my go-to explainer for spicy food:
Mexicans acculturate their small children to spicy food gradually, by mixing increasing amounts of chilies into the meal. It takes a while before the kids enjoy it and at first they don't like it. If this has never been done to you, you need to make the leap yourself, usually later in life. The whole point of spicy food is that at first it is painful, causing the release of endorphins to the brain. With time the pain goes away and you still get the endorphins, although you may seek out an increasingly strong dose to boost the endorphin response.
Not all Americans think this is a good deal. Older people are less likely to make this initial investment and endure the initial pain. The same is true for uneducated people (adjusting for ethnicity), who both are less likely to know it will end up being a source of pleasure and who on average have higher discount rates. What other predictions can be made? If you and your country are too obsessed with dairy you will be led away from spicy food, one way or the other. Milk usually counteracts the pleasing effects of chilies.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/scienceandfood/2017/01/17/...
If British food is obnoxiously spicy to you, you're probably very unaccustomed to spicy food.
When someone is accustomed to piquant foods, they aren't distracted as easily by the heat. Different peppers have very different flavor and spice profiles that are easier to pick up when you don't have to immediately drown out with milk. They also don't come through in small quantities, so if you haven't been desensitized you wont be eating enough to taste the other flavors.
Let me give an analogy from music. Something is good rock music not just because it is loud and has fast shredding. That music is indeed probably crap and just hiding its lack of talent imagination and quality. However that does not mean all loud rock is crap, far from it. It takes a while to distinguish.
Good hot food is not cheap music stuck forever in it faux earnest chorus and mastered poorly onto a cd locked in on high db. That said there is a lot of such food around.
I've never heard of wasabi and chocolate though.
Spanish and Hispanic chocolate drinks, from what I understand, are pretty close to the old Mexican style. (Even Nestle's "Abeulita" milk chocolate mix tastes pretty similar, at least to my palate.) There was a reference in Braudel (The Structures of Everyday Life) to an Indonesian Muslim prince who was intoxicated when he drank a chocolate drink that a Spanish embassy served them, and was enraged that they had treacherously given him an intoxicant to make him lose his reason; Braudel is really skeptical of the account, but trying Hispanic chocolate, especially Mexican, makes it sound a lot more plausible...
Because Britain lacks a (good) cuisine of its own, we tend to eat exclusively the food of other countries, and those dishes are often spicy.
Comrade Orwell wrote a valiant little essay trying to fight that idea.
Plucky fellow.
(e.g. http://orwell.ru/library/articles/cooking/english/e_dec )
Surprised to hear they put chili in confectionery (assuming that is sweet items).
Speaking for the various Chinese culinary traditions because that's what I grew up with, the spiciness is usually integral to the overall flavor and mouthfeel of the dish. Szechuan food (traditionally spicy) without spice tastes off balance, as does Cantonese food (traditionally mild) with extra spiciness.
My experience with French food has been that it generally avoids significant spiciness, which is fine, but it also means that the recipes are not crafted with spiciness in mind. Szechuan recipes are definitely crafted with spiciness in mind.
Cloves/pepper/ginger - and now chillies.
It is a brutal pepper and only the truly exceptional, probably <0.001% of people could honestly say they enjoy it.
I do suggest to someone who may want to try them to use very small amount in cooking so they can enjoy it. I wouldnt want the experience spoiled because it is super hot.
Whatever you do do not touch your eyes etc even after you wash your hands!
Do you have any reading or anything you would recommend for getting into that type of thing? I was also interested in the viability of like an indoor greenhouse/hydroponics setup for growing chilis and things.
However, they thrive in the sun with little water, you can basically set them outside a window and forget about them.
http://i.imgur.com/Axy5nl3.jpg
The soil tomato on the left is the mother. The hydro tomato on the right was 5 weeks old (cloned from the plant on the left) and already well over the side of the balcony railing, loaded with tomatoes. (Note the lid had to be tied down to prevent the tomato-heavy plant from pulling the lid off and tumbling to the ground below.)
Good to know about using a strong fan for indoor pollination. Might have been the missing element last time I tried.
Both of those sauces aren't vinegar-forward (like tabasco is), FWIW
Some of the best, hottest hot sauces I've bought have been from little stands at farmers' markets southwest of here (semi-rural area). Some without labels - just a jar of the stuff. The only bad part is trying to go back months later to get more.
I bought two dozen bottles of it after I found it in Belize.
Milk is a decent antidote for overexposure. Better is yogurt. And even better is yogurt with mint and cucumber, one of the standard raitas. Or yogurt and banana.
About a thirty minute drive from me is Sunni Sky's[2] ice cream in Angier, NC. They have a flavor called Cold Sweat[3] which includes among other things ghost pepper extract.
They require you to sign a waiver[4] before letting you taste it.
Then they ask you if you want the baby taste or the real taste. Assuming you go for the real taste (as I did), in addition to handing you a mouthful of Cold Sweat, they are standing by with a second spoonful of vanilla for putting out the fire in your mouth.
Now I like really spicy food. I'll order things as hot as they'll let me in most Thai restaurants. So I was able to finish the full size taste of Cold Sweat they gave me, but there is no possible way I could have eaten a full scoop.
After finishing my taste, I glance up at their menu and notice a flavor called "Exit Wound." Upon asking what it is, they tell me it's about twice as hot as Cold Sweat.
Let me just say about these flavors: ice cream won't save you this time[5].
The flavor has made the local news[6] and Food TV[7].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwyQoLtqB0s
[3] http://www.coldsweaticecream.com
[4] http://www.coldsweaticecream.com/Cold_Sweat_Waiver.htm
[5] http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/san...
It actually has more sugar than fat or protein. Quite a bit more.
If you dump 13g of sugar into 8oz of water, do you not have sugary water? If you then dump in 8oz of protein and fat, does it cease being sugary water?
Chile: the spicy fruit that we use to burn ourselves silly. Jalepeño chile, Habañero chile, etc.
Chile #2: the sauce made in New Mexico from red or green chiles, often Hatch chiles
Chili: a delicious stew made with three primary ingredients:
1. Beef 2. Chiles, either powdered or fresh 3. A very strong opinion as to what constitutes chili
A bit off-topic, but since you mention spelling: "habañero" is one of my favourite hyperforeignisms in the English language. Wikipedia even uses it as an example in the first paragraph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperforeignism . Such an interesting linguistic phenomenon!
Apparently, I'm at odds with most people on this. Friends have a really hard time accepting that I mean it when I say I have no preference for what we are going to eat (well, I'll skip the meat, but otherwise), or indeed, whether we are going to eat anything - can't we just grab some bananas if we're hungry?
Of course, this also generally leaves me less than enthusiastic about eating at restaurants. Basically money out the window in my stymied view of the world.
Peppers simply heighten the experience of eating, like having your ass slapped during sex.
Adding enough sex to a movie will teeter it into pornography, but that doesn't mean it's unenjoyable.
And I'm not convinced most heat-lovers add it to the point where they cannot taste anything.
I live in Mexico where I suppose most people are part of the mediocre herd that Safety1stClyde so insists he's not, yet the people I know reaching for the hotter salsas have a tolerance to the milder ones. Suggesting that it's "to look cool" is petty.