Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Contents 1 How do Thai restaurants add spice? Written by Zach Rabbit. Previous Post. Next Post. Search for:. Thai cooks aren't out to prove anything to you, they know how the food is supposed to taste, according to their upbringing. They're just being accommodating. Now I was in a panic. Surely I'd been pegged as a white man who'd soon receive a dumbed-down version of the dish.
The resulting "Thai homestyle dish" consisted of several meaty ribs cooked to spoon-tender softness in a galangal and makrut lime leaf-scented broth. Dried chilies and a few fresh ones gave it just the right amount of heat. Ricker, who vociferously debunked the notion of Thai spicy, would be proud. These days I'm quicker to ask for the khruang phrung , or "stuff to adjust flavors," as Ricker says it's called in Thai, than I am to utter the words "Thai spicy.
And to think we farang are stuck with just salt and pepper. Hot as they can be, "Thai spicy" larbs and som tum are not the most fiery things I've ever eaten. That honor goes to a ceviche de pescado I once had at Rinconcito Peruano, a bygone restaurant in Hell's Kitchen.
I'd requested that it be made bien picante , for you see, I was battling a raging hangover that day and placed much store in the restorative properties of a bracing serving of spicy lime-cooked fish. When it came to the table, there was just a little bit of finely minced orange chilies strewn on top. I dug in and it didn't even trip the spice meter. A few minutes later the waiter emerged from the kitchen bearing my "fixed" ceviche.
It was now covered in finely minced ribbons of orange and red chilies. I'll never know whether Rinconcito's chef was screwing with the crazy gringo or not, but I suspect he was. Within minutes my entire mouth was ablaze my lips burning fiercely. Macho man that I am, or rather was, I finished the entire portion.
One of my earliest memories of spicy food is the time my old man tried to make his own Chinese-style chili oil. My mother and I were upstairs and my father was in the kitchen frying peppers in oil in a cast iron pan. All of a sudden we started coughing and gagging as the weaponized capsaicin fumes wafted throughout the house. That was the last time he tried to make chili oil.
Every now and then we'd make a trip to Vincent's Clam Bar in Westbury where we'd order scungilli in medium red sauce, with a little gravy boat of the hot sauce on the side.
Chili head that he was, even my father was willing to admit that the highest level of the spicy marinara sauce was too much for him. In actual fact, chillies are classified as a fruit, and, more specifically, as a berry.
No Pain No Gain? The human mouth, in fact, has an abundance of nerve endings, while the esophagus has very few. Your mouth, however, may hold onto the sensation of pain long after you took that fatal bite. And contrary to our first instinct, drinking a glass of water will do nothing to soften the pain, simply because the heat in chillies comes in the form of a pungent oil in its skin, seeds, and that inner white rind-and oil, as we know, does not mix with water.
Interestingly, chillies are propagated in nature by birds, who enjoy eating the chilli seeds without experiencing any pain.
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