A Spicy Relationship
While hot peppers turn pale faces red and force the inexperienced plead for a cold drink, I find instant gratification as well as deep fulfillment in them. They are pain and joy, wrapped in one. Two sides of the same coin. A dab of hot sauce, a sprinkle of dried flakes, or even better, a mini plate of minced fresh peppers rivals the finishing touch of an artist, one that makes my meal truly complete.
My family started cultivating my spicy tooth when I was small. As the youngest kid at the table, I was a novice to hot food. My family laughed at me with warm pity. “Your palate is still tender,” they said, “Dip your food in this cup of tea. It will wash away some of the spice.” It was a gentle push towards the right direction: eating spicy was not a choice, but an inevitability. In the Chinese community, there is a special kind of respect reserved for someone who eats flaming hot food without a grimace. The same kind of respect is reserved for the last man standing after rounds of shots — evidence of sophistication. I thought that being able to eat spicy food was proof that you were a true adult, one not afraid of the pain. Whenever we ordered at restaurants, my dad would ask the server for some hot sauce if the dish wasn’t hot already. Now I do the same. I fidget in my seat before the hot sauce comes.; Wwithout the sprinkle, the meal is missing its defining moments.
Most Chinese don’t know that hot peppers were originally from the Americas. Peppers became such kitchen essentials it is hard to imagine our ancestors lived without them for five thousand years. How bland must their food be? Hot peppers first appeared in the Ming Dynasty in the 16th century, and quickly conquered the palates in central and southern China.bef Now China produces 46% of the hot peppers in the world, mainly to supply the nation’s addiction for spicy food. There is a play on words that sums up Chinese people’s attitudes for hot peppers — notice the order of the characters is the only thing that is different:
不怕辣 — not afraid of spicy
怕不辣 — afraid it’s not spicy Hot peppers are a source of happiness in many regions of the world. Chili peppers were originally found in the Americas, but rose to culinary heights globally. Mexico has its prized Jalapeño, and India has its terrorizing Ghost Pepper. You may notice that tropical and sub-tropical regions embrace hot peppers more than anywhere else. It is perhaps due to the fact that food turns bad faster in hot climates, and spices act as natural preservatives. Hot peppers also force you to sweat, and the body cools down as a result.
辣不怕 — not defeated by the spicy
In Chinese, 辣 (spicy) is a noun, an adjective, and an adverb. The word is as dynamic as the taste: there are other “peppers” which are fundamentally different from chili peppers, but produce similarly pungent sensations with a range of nuance. For example, , China has its indigenous Sichuan Pepper, which doesn’t produce flaming hotness but stinging numbness, as if the mouth is regaining feelings after the anesthetics wear out, or like a leg falling asleep. Japan has its Wasabi that shoots screaming stimulation up the nasal cavity where it lingers for a short while. Every now and then I make a mistake and draw too much Wasabi on my sushi. It immerses me in so much pain I am afraid of what it is capable of. Surely, feeding someone a big spoonful can be a form of torture? We also use辣to describe the taste of onions, garlic, and ginger. Although very different, they all share a burning quality.
My college roommate, who is isChinese, worships spicy food on a different level than I do. In the realm of eating spicy, she is a Jedi and I am a nobody. She has real skills. When she shares her food with me, I can’t take more than two bites without having an inner turmoil and a mental breakdown. By the third bite I have to jump into an ice bath to cool my red-hot lips. It is a love-hate relationship, like the one I have with muscle pain after lifting at the gym. It is a good pain. To sweat is to liberate. There is a plastic organizer under her bed that she uses to store her kitchen supply, which contains three homemade jars of pepper oil, some spicy taco seasoning mix, a 12-pack Samyang Hell Sspicy ramen that makes my eyes water when opened, and other representation of peppers I’ve lost track of. My roommate said, “Anything not spicy is not allowed in my organizer.” For her, anything not spicy has a potential not yet realized. She doesn’t eat hot peppers by themselves, but she doesn’t eat food without hot peppers. The two must be combined.The current holder of the Guinness record’s hottest chili in the world, which is updated every few years, is the Carolina Reaper. It contains 1.57 million SHU (a unit for pungency). In comparison, the hottest Tabasco sauce contains 8,000 SHU. My dad and his colleagues visited an organic farm just outside my hometown Xiamen. The farm incorporated a restaurant that served the farm’s fresh produce, which included Ghost Peppers. They contain 1 million SHU and are a former Guinness record holder. Looking for a challenge in the restaurant, my dad and his colleagues ordered a fresh Ghost Pepper. The well-meaning server hesitated and brought a pickled one instead. Not satisfied with the compromise, they asked for it again. The server then brought a fried one, ripped of its strongest character. My dad’s throat was inflamed and his stomach churned with pain on the way home after a tiny little bite. The Ghost Peppers were ghastly indeed.
Why do people enjoy spicy food? The question is related to how people feel pain. Capsaicin is the active ingredient in hot peppers, responsible for creating the sensation of hotness. The compound binds to neural receptor TRPV1, the same receptor that responds to hot temperatures and induces pain. It is believed that the body releases endorphins in response to the pain, creating a pleasant feeling similar to a runner’s high.
A smart homeowner will put pepper flakes in the bird feeder as a deterrent for squirrels. Birds do not have TRPV1, and therefore cannot taste the spiciness, whereas squirrels can and will run away from such burning taste. The repeated exposure to a large amount of capsaicin wears down the receptor’s sensitivity, accounting for the phenomenon that someone who eats spicy for years is able to handle intensely hot food with ease.
Everyone likes sweetness as a baby, but spiciness is a pleasure that develops gradually, similar to drinking dark coffee and wine tasting. Spiciness has a complexity that you learn to appreciate with age; you have to have the courage to try. In college,
after all the pizza splices are gone, a pepperoncino usually sits alone in the box, rejected. Perhaps too hot for the average taste bud of an American student, Pepperoncino, the Italian name for hot chili pepper, is no comfort food. It is the opposite. It is challenge food.
Stress Relief.
I was stressed out duringDuring the final exams,. I studied 12 hours a day with a razor-sharp focus. I powered through lunch and dinner with the lecture slides before my eyesmy laptop in front of me. Towards the end of the night, The focus came with a cost. I felt a tension built building up inside me and my head screaming a headachea. Then I popped open a package of hellHell -Sspicy ramen noodle and . It was boiled it to perfection. After a careful bite, my mouth was lit. Then my body was engulfed by a wildfire. Just Llike how fire consumes everything it touches, the hot ramen consumed my test anxiety and headache. It was spicy to the depth of my being. Hang in there. I was liberated. Reborn. As a popular Chinese saying goes, there is nothing a package of Hell -Sspicy ramen noodle can’t fix. If there is, then two packages.
When Chinese students get together in the foreign land of America, we often treat ourselves to a meal of hot pot. Usually with hot peppers floating on the surface, hot pot brings us a sense of home and reunion. A hot pot is a constantly boiling pot with rich broth on the dinner table that you throw in the raw food. Only a few thin slices of meat or veggies are put in at a time. The food is cooked instantly, and if something takes longer to cook, for example, a slice of potato, you wait a few minutes and pick it up and put it in your special dipping sauce. When I first took my American friends to a hot pot restaurant, one of them asked with incredulity,
“You pay to cook your own food?”
“It’s about the experience.” I said. And it’s about how simple and quick it is. When you serve hot pot at home, you only need to wash and chop up the ingredients. The entire cooking process is eliminated since all the guests are cooking for themselves. For my family, hot pot appeared on the table in the winter. We put beef, tofu, rice noodle, corn and leafy vegetables in the pot one at a time and patiently waited for them to change colors or textures. I would plan out which piece to pick up next, and sometimes my dad intercepted what I set my eyes on. At the end of the meal, we drank the heart-warming broth to savor the essence of everything that had been in it.
A type of hot pot that is gaining popularity in the past decade is 鸳鸯火锅, the Mandarin Duck Hot Pot. Here, we do not eat the mandarin duck. It is a metaphor. Unlike other ducks, the mandarin ducks are said to be extraordinary creatures that bond for life. A male and a female always accompany each other. They are a symbol for duality, hence, the Mandarin Duck Hot Pot is dualism materialized. The pot is divided in the middle by a metal wall like the Tai Chi symbol ☯, allowing the broth on one side to be spicy and the other side bland. The two types of broth do not mix so that both the spice-averse and the spice-seeking can enjoy eating together.
In The College of William & Mary, we serve the Mandarin Duck Hot Pot in the Chinese Language House for social gatherings. It is our signature dish: a simple, delicious way to feed a decent number of people. One side is meant to be spicy and the other side bland, in consideration of those who can’t handle the burn. But my roommate makes the broth, and she has a very different definition of bland. This results in one side being super spicy, and the other side being intolerably spicy. The house residents and friends gather around the table, and the hot pot is placed in the middle with plates of raw food on the sides. As soon as we start munching, all the white people at the table will turn red, and I will run to the fridge for a cup of cold milk, which is said to be most effective in soothing the inflammation. The steam rises up from the boiling pot, and we fight over the limited number of shrimp submerged in the broth while throwing in more food simultaneously. We laugh, joke, and share stories. My roommate brings over a bowl of water for the spice-averse friends to wash their food. It is just like when I was small, my family passed me a cup of tea to wash my food. Except that I am now attending college in America, and all of my family are back in China. They are not here for Thanksgiving Break or Christmas, and I am not there for the Autumn’s Festival or the Chinese New Year.
Again, it is pain and joy, wrapped in one.
