Some Like It Hot and Some Like It Hotter
Sweepstakes | Pay Your Bill | Customer Care
Search
StoriesTipsHealthFood & RecipesFun & PrizesVideosShopTrusted Brand
Home » Advice & Tips » Living » Some Like It Hot and Some Like It Hotter
Some Like It Hot and Some Like It Hotter . . . as our intrepid reporter Robert Kiener discovered
By Robert Kiener Share it
Text Size: AA AA | Print it | Email it
Walking through the massive, bustling Abasto Market in Oaxaca City, Mexico, I am overwhelmed by the colourful, pungent mountains of vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, and fowl. As I pick my way over slippery floors and dodge scurrying customers, vendors offer me everything from exotic three-cow's-milk cheeses to the local specialty, chapulines (fried grasshoppers).
Related Stories ●
Life's 25 Toughest Questions Answered
●
Big Boys Don't Cry
●
What Dads Are Made Of
I refuse to let them put me off my quest. I have come to Oaxaca City, one of Mexico's culinary centres, in my search for some of the world's hottest chilli peppers. My guide, noted Mexican cooking expert and cookbook author Susana Trilling, leads me around a corner and we come upon stall after stall of chilli peppers in every conceivable shape, size and colour. They are piled high on wooden crates, spill out of plastic laundry baskets and overflow from brown burlap sacks. ''We have a wider variety of chilli peppers here than almost any other place in the world,'' Trilling declares.
Indeed, chilli pepper fanatics from around the world, also known as ''chilli-heads,'' make pilgrimages to this market to worship at the altar of the humble, but addictive, fruit. Trilling greets a chilli pepper vendor like an old friend and begins pointing out the different varieties: dark brown chipotles, the spherical cascabel, the dried red guajillo, green and red serranos, ten-centimetre-long mirasol, bulletshaped piquins, the jalapeno. At another stall she shows me some habaneros – lantern-shaped, bright orange chillis that look beguilingly beautiful. As I reach for one, Trilling grabs my arm. ''Don't touch that one unless you're wearing gloves,'' she says. ''It's dangerously hot.'' If you don't wear gloves and absentmindedly rub your eyes, it will be very painful, she adds. I ask what would happen if I bit off a small sample. ''It will rip off the top of your head!'' she replies. Her tone and her suddenly stern, deep brown eyes convince me she's not kidding. Despite the warning, I know I won't be able to resist the lure of the Habaneros for long. It is estimated that one in four people eats chillis every day. They are an integral part of diets around the world, from Mexico and the Middle East to Thailand and Korea. Chillis were first domesticated in South America, in what is now Bolivia, some 6000 years ago. Incas called the spicy fruit aji, and the Aztecs changed it to chilli. Thanks to Christopher Columbus, the newly christened chillis spread to Europe in the late 1400s. Portuguese and Spanish traders introduced them to Africa and Asia, where they were such a hit that locals soon viewed the import as their own. Today, because of their sheer popularity and ease of cross-pollination, there are thousands of varieties around the world. Thais eat more hot peppers – five grams per person per day – than anyone else in the world. India produces more chilli peppers – over two million acres worth – than any other country. Hungary's famously pungent condiment, paprika (from the Latin for ''pepper''), is derived from hot sweet red peppers that are grown in Central Europe and in Spain. Chilli peppers have long been a part of folklore around the world. They were used to deter vampires and werewolves in Eastern Europe and thought to ward off the ''evil eye'' by South and Central Americans. In northern Mexico chillis are still used in potions meant to make an enemy ill, and as a cure for hangovers. Everywhere you go, the first rule of chillis seems to be: the hotter the better. Recently, near the ancient Punjab town of Multan, a Pakistani friend told me over a dinner that featured an eye-watering variety of fiery chillis, ''There's no such thing as a chilli that's too hot.'' Just why do chilli-heads crave hotter and hotter chillis? ''The easy answer is that we're crazy,'' says Dave DeWitt http://www.rdasia.com/some_like_it_hot_and_some_like_it_hotter (1 of 4)4/4/2012 3:02:41 PM