The chocolate, the potato, and the chili pepper may well be the pre-Columbian America gastronomic legacy to the subcontinent, then spread to all regions of the world.
Experts agree that chilies originated in Mexico as early as 3,500 BC. In the early 1500’s AD, the Spaniards and the Portuguese took them to Asia where they now thrive in the hot climates of many parts of India, Indonesia and other tropical Asian countries.
When fresh, chilies are vegetables or, rather, fruit. When dried, they become a spice. As a spice, chili is people’s favorite flavoring. Chili is the key flavoring in most Indian and Mexican recipes. As a flavor, chilies are sensual—prickling the tongue, numbing the lips including the back of the throat with fiery pang of heat, which make even the braver men weep. The spice is so pungent that no other substance manages to blur the distinction between pleasure and pain in quite the same way.
How Chili Makes Recipes Particularly Tasty
Chili peppers that were introduced to South Asia were domesticated to produce varieties, ranging from mild and sweet to hot and pungent, differing greatly in hotness, size shape, and colors from orange to red to yellow to green.
All chilies belong to the capsicum family, which also includes sweet or bell peppers. They contain capsaicin—the alkaloid that gives chilies that distinctive pungency.
The flavor of the chili lies close beneath its skin. The soft central core that holds the seed is by far the hottest part, so any recipe that advises the cook to extract the seeds and their membrane is attempting to tone down the heat.
There are many hot and spicy recipes, but none can come close to the fiery Indonesian, Indian, and Thai foods. The Indonesians, Thais and Indians add chili to every food they cook and every recipe has a variety of accompanying chili condiments on the table. The most common condiments are simple dried chili powder, chili water--a combination of fresh chili, vinegar, fish sauce and lime juice.
Soups and stews, the simplest of recipes, traditionally include chopped green chilies for spicy and hearty taste. Mexicans cook their famous turkey stew combining varieties of chilies: mild, dark green Ancho or Mulato, long, shriveled Pasilla, and hot Serrano. Mexicans use fresh or dried chilies for their food flavoring, but, one can never be substituted for the other. Dried chilies can be used either by grinding or soaking them.
In Thailand, the marvelous hot-sour salad called ‘Yam Saeb’ combines crushed dried chilies with spring onions, green mango, lime juice, whole cashew nuts, green herbs, and beef or pork. Likewise, the rich and flavorful Indian curry is traditionally prepared with plenty of young hot green chili peppers and cayenne pepper. Younger chilies are green in color and the mature are orange-red color that changes to brownish-red when dried.
Tropical chilies possess the most fire power. Hot chilies are chopped raw in salads and cooked in stir-fried dishes. Famous hot chilies include the Bird’s-eye, Thai, Habenero, Pequin, used as base for Tabasco sauce, and Naga, considered as the world’s hottest chili variety to date. Naga belongs to the Capsicum species. Capsicum peppers can be eaten fresh, pickled, preserved or cooked.
In many countries, people include chilies as part of their cooking basics. Chilies are preserved for home use and others are processed as bottles of spicy sauces or hot salsas.
Taming the Chili for Beginners
Beginners should go easy at first if they want to make the best of the fiery chili. The substance capsaicin that makes chilies taste hot is sometimes too fiery to handle. Thus, it is far better to add a hint of pickled jalapeno to guacamole than to chop the chili fresh, with seeds and all.
It is possible to measure the strength of Chilies peppers using the Scoville Scale—a unit of measurement of capsaicin level in a particular pepper variety ranging from zero to 100,000. Jalapeno, the medium –sized green chili, which is popular in Tex-Mex dishes, scores 3,000 units. The small bird’s-eye chilies, common in Southeast Asians recipes, rate 10,000 units. The hottest chili, recorded in the Guinness Book of Records, is the Bhut Jolokia with over a million SHUs.
More than just being good to eat, the chili is also prized by the pharmaceutical industry as an active ingredient in ointments used to treat stiff and aching muscles. In India, mothers feed chilies to their babies to relieve flatulence.
Chilies can impart enough pain in the back of the throat, yet, cooks have used the hot spice for centuries. Why some like it hot? The answer is that humans want to experience that burning sensation—the warm, glowing, after dinner mood.
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