It’s International Hot and Spicy day today!!! To those who know me well, they would instantly spot how I will go on a hunger strike without my “cili padi” (bird’s eye chilli) present. Any form of ingredients that bring out the hot and spicy in a food is heaven to me. For example, last week I was at this cafe in Sunway area, I ordered my favourite Aglio Olio spaghetti, extra spicy (of course) but what came out was nothing short of a disappointment. So, I ask the waitress to get chilli flakes for me. After adding the flakes to my dish, my friends were in awe of the amount of the chilli flakes I was sprinkling. It looked like a sea of red chillis on top of a plain olive oil based spaghetti. Of course, after that, I enjoyed my meal. Like it was the piece of the puzzle that was missing in my life.
Growing up from a family who eats cili padi raw, I have been accustomed to my palette being used to eating spicy food. The spicier it gets, the more exciting my lunch or dinner adventure becomes and I’m in love the rush it gets me by. Of course, coming to a great tolerance towards spicy food wasn’t easy. The suffering tears I shed from my mum’s extra spicy chicken sambal, up to the point of grabbing chunks of ice cubes and shoving them in my mouth to cool the heat in my mouth. I’m proud, however, that I am passing down my expertise when it comes to food to others.
P.S. You guys should try adding a fraction amount of the bird’s eye chilli to your spaghetti carbonara. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.
Archaeological evidence suggests that people have been using hot spices in their recipes for over 6000 years. Can you believe that? Chili peppers are eaten by a quarter of the earth’s population every day, in countries all over the globe. They are perennial shrubs belonging to the Capsicum family and were completely unknown to most of the world until Christopher Columbus made his way to the New World in 1492. But Columbus wasn’t travelling around the world to find chillies, Columbus was seeking a new trade route to Asia, hankering for black peppercorns. The peppercorns were known as “black gold” because of their value as a commodity, often used to pay rent or salaries. Until well after the Middle Ages, almost all of the world’s pepper travelled from the Malabar Coast, in India.
Today, the Carolina Reaper is the world’s hottest pepper according to the Guinness World Records. There is nothing normal about this pepper. It was bred for heat and that it is, with an average SHU of over 1.5 million and peaks at 2.2 million SHU ( Scoville Heat Unit (A measure of Spiciness)). This underdog pepper has a sweet and flavour, that is right before the heat kicks in. There also some videos on Youtube showing people puking and crying.
Did you know that chilli peppers can help you lose weight by boosting your metabolism and curbing your cravings for fatty and sugary foods? They are also good for you as they are high in vitamins, a good source of beta-carotene, calcium, and potassium, and may help reduce cholesterol.
Next time, if you decide to be a daredevil with the chillis, make sure you prepare a glass of cold milk. Avoid water as it won’t mix with the oil and will only result in moving the heat to other parts of your mouth. All the best and let the dragon in you unleash!