Hot 'n spicy (Some bite and kick in your cuisine)

Mar 22 06:35 UTC 2002

<from a drift in Winter Agora>

Here's an item about spice in the extreme.

Some points of discussion:

Spice around the land-- what kinds grow in your area?  Are there taste 
preferences in different areas?  For instance, the further south you 
go, the more the folks seem to tolerate hotter spice.  For example, 
cuisine near Mexico seems to be much hotter than what is traditional 
fare in New England.  Where does the Midwest fall?  I'm in the Yakima 
Valley, which has a heavy Hispanic population, so I think folks here 
are used to spicy food.  (And so I laugh when I read items from folks 
who just don't do hot.)

We've seen some pretty interesting names for hot sauces.  List some of 
the ones you've seen.

Powder or sauce, during cooking or splash it on afterwards-- which do 
you prefer?

response 2 of 67:

Mar 22 08:23 UTC 2002

(erk, no I don't grind up chinese persons...peppers!)

response 4 of 67:

Mar 22 11:42 UTC 2002

On the subject of chiles, one should note that you don't necessarily 
need to put them into a sauce.  Diced, they cook and infuse flavor 
just fine into meats.  One of my favorite things is to add jalapeno 
slices to a Hawaiian-style pizza (i.e., backbacon and pineapple).  
They also do well on a hamburger.

Types of chiles are wide and varied, of course.

The jalapeno should be bright green.  Little brown lines that score 
the chile aren't bad; they indicate that the seeds have grown hotter.  
You see, the fire is in the seeds.

Serrano peppers are red and slightly dark, and are about the same size 
as jalapenos.  Supposedly, they are a bit sweeter than jalapenos, but 
I'd say they have just as much bite.

The habanero, which many of you recognize as one of the hottest chiles 
in the world, is a brilliant orange.  It packs a whallop.  A 6 oz can 
should last you about a month or so.  If you buy them fresh, well.. 
never cooked with them.

The cayenne is pretty common and is also red, but is slimmer and a bit 
smaller than the serrano.  It's also relatively mild compared to 
jalapenos with the seeds in them.

There are others which I'm sure you can add.

'Salsa picante,' or hot sauce, is pretty varied as far as Mexican 
cooking goes, but I'm sure that stems back to home recipes.  The 
restaurants out here usually use tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and 
jalapenos.  Chunky styles follow that to a degree, but may add corn or 
bell peppers.  Some home styles add pineapple, apples..

Tabasco and other drip sauces tend to stick to just chiles and 
powders.  You've got your cayenne for Tabasco and Louisana styles, 
jalapeno, and habanero.  The latter often seems to be a gavacho gag 
gift.  The fun goes from there..even barbeque and steak sauces have 
hot varieties.

Curry is punchy, and I love rice so much more with it.  I doubt I cook 
anything near authentically Indian.  With chicken in a yogurt sauce of 
various spices, I add chutney, which can come relatively spicy.

whoops-- resp:1 and resp:2--  According to the _Joy of Cooking_ (2nd 
ed.), p. 576, white pepper and black pepper are essentially the same, 
as the former comes from fully ripened peppercorns (the black outer 
shell is buffed off), and the latter comes from underripe berries that 
are fermented and sun-dried.

The book is excellent in describing spices, and it gives you an idea 
of how the myriad of sauces are put together.

response 6 of 67:

Mar 22 18:13 UTC 2002

The only mustard I use is Coleman's dry mustard, prepared fresh for
use. It has some kick. I don't know the source for what is served
in Chinese restaurants, though. 

response 8 of 67:

Mar 22 23:52 UTC 2002

I like spicy foods, too. My wife is Mexican, and I really like Mexican 
food. Moles (pronounced moh-lays) are very good, but not often found in 
Mexican restaurants around here. I sometimes make chicken or turkey 
mole. The Dona Maria mole that you can find at Meijer is actually 
pretty good.

I also like a lot of the Szechwan dishes, too. I used to go to San 
Francisco on business a couple of times a year and made it a point to 
go to a place called Brandy Ho's. The food there can be very hot, but 
man is it good. I forget exactly what they called it, but they served 
some kind of spicy ham that was really good.

response 10 of 67:

Mar 23 00:47 UTC 2002

  Lately I've been eating often at the newly opened second branch of a
  Seattle restaurant that decided to open a storefront on the Eastside,
  Malaysian Satay Hut.  It's an uninspiring name (is the word "Hut" in
  a restaurant name ever an enticement?) but the food is inexpensive,
  pretty tasty, and a change of pace (for me, at least..)

  It seems to be pretty authentic and enthusiastically supported by
  lots of SE-Asian-looking customers.  The food is a bit like Thai,
  though with less reliance on coconut milk than typical at an American
  Thai restaurant, and seems to show a fair amount of Indian and Chinese
  influence too, though whether that's a property of the cuisine or just
  of the menu at this restaurant I wouldn't venture to guess.

  I just wish the peanut sauce they serve with their satay had a bit more
  kick.  I've got a great recipe for satay and peanut sauce and after
  making it at home most restaurants' offerings just seem too timid.

response 12 of 67:

Mar 23 03:42 UTC 2002

re#6: Funny that you should mention Coleman's.  It might scare you to
know that it is the prefered dry mustard powder in our household.  I
don't know how they do it but it travels well and stays fresh.  I had
not even considered mustard to be a hot sauce.  Most good chinese
restaurants will prepare mustard daily from powder - and many in the US
I have confirmed use an 'ancient chinese secret' -

Odd story.  Whats-her-name thought I was just sorta odd in that every
time we would go back to my home for a visit I had to stop by "Kelly's
Drive-In and Bronco Bar" - in the industrial district near the airport.
I would always order double fried won-ton which comes with a mustard-soy
sauce dipping sauce.  I once asked (long before I had even met
whats-her-name) what the mustard was and it was Coleman's!  It was front
page news in the both city papers when it announced it was closing and
in both stories it mentioned that folk passing through would make it
a point to stop by for the wontons. They had postcards and money from
around the world pasted up by the register but I just always had figured
it was just part of the odd atmosphere of the chinese
diner/drive-in/bar.  Turns out it was internationally 'known' dive.
(Also learned the Chin-Ho Kelly character in the TV series _Hawaii
Five-O_ noted for its 'inside jokes' was a send up to Kelly's as the
owner's name was Ho Chin and I sure never connected the two even though
I knew the owner.)  Anyways, I was once in a chinese restaurant and
noticed fried wonton on the menu and when served whipped up a sauce of
soy and mustard and the owner noticed and walked over and asked me if 
I was from hawaii.  This was in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  Explained that
the habit of that sauce was unique to hawaii based on working as a chef
in chinese restaurants all over the US for 30 years or so.  I have
observed the same phenomena and usually ask and its either yes, or 'no,
but I lived/served/studied there for some years'.

re#3:  Cholula is a sauce of red and piquin peppers, vinegar, some other
unknown stuff.  Originally introduced by Cuervo (tequila) to the US via
Sam's Club in a complicated swap deal during the devaluation of the old
mexican peso years ago.  Its the one in the plain glass bottle with the
round pinewood cap with the lady on the front.  There might be some
chipolte in it, but it does seem to have a unique earthy taste.  It also
etches concrete as the Sam's Club in Cicero found out the hard way.

Damn, just for grins I went to another browser window and they
have a web page (Duh!)  http://www.cholula.com   I just ordered a case
of 12 of the 8-oz bottles for half the cost each compared to the 5oz.
that I bought at the supermarket.  What a deal.

There seems to be two varieties of hungarian paprika, yellow and red.
Dunno what exactly much about it, but they are different flavor.

re#4:  Didn't know that about white pepper.  I never thought much about
it just considered it two different spices. (I buy white pepper in large
platic jugs and usually use it when grilling meat on an open fire.)

Re#9: What brand?
re#10:  Do you like boiled peanuts?  Nini makes a killer peanut sauce
that uses as a base ingredient whatever (cheap) peanut butter we have on
hand.  SHe observed once that whats-her-name liked the peanut sauce at a
restaurant and was able to develope a recipe by taste, and improved on
it.

response 14 of 67:

Mar 23 04:06 UTC 2002

RE: #10:  get thyself to the kitchen conference and post the recipe!

response 16 of 67:

Mar 23 05:09 UTC 2002

  re #14:  I'll try to remember to do so when I'm not on my way out the door..

response 18 of 67:

Mar 23 06:34 UTC 2002

Wasabi is wonderful but not a mustard but rather a 'horseradish'.  I
have at least two tubes of wasabi in the fridge at any given time.
Zaru-soba (cold buckwheat and yam noodles) with wasabi garnish is 
another fave - the Memmen dipping sauce is hard to get - there is
only one market in chicagoland that sells it as far as I have
determined.

response 20 of 67:

Mar 24 00:01 UTC 2002

What sorts of "hot" spices could be reasonably be grown in New England
with traditional agriculture (no greenhouses, etc.), so that they'd have
any chance of being part of "traditional New England cooking"?

response 22 of 67:

Mar 24 02:29 UTC 2002

Horseradish grows in Massachusetts, anyway.  I don't remember my grandfather
growing peppers, but that may be a failure of my memory or his personal
preferences.

response 24 of 67:

Mar 24 04:22 UTC 2002

I think it's the fact that, to someone really accustomed to spices, 
eating food that hasn't been spiced is like eating styrofoam.  It's 
similar to people who smoke who are used to salting everything heavily.