Craig I imagine you cooking odd things and slipping peppers into them. “Honey did you put peppers in the pancakes?” “No dear, I did not.” hides the pepper stems in the garbage can
One of my best friends I cook with all the time more or less has an allergic reaction to capsaicin (swelling in the mouth, even a little bleeding at the gums, apparently, if she gets hit with a heavy dose). It is. . . weird cooking for her :P
I’ve been training my gf similar to what you describe, though. She can now order “medium” at Thai restaurants!
You guys have made me aware that apparently I should be training my girlfriend to eat hotter foods. Is it like the couch to 5K thing, I need to give her daily doses ramped up a little each time? ;)
I think I read some (possibly bunk) science that suggested that capsaicin would damage or shut down taste buds, and that, while they could heal/reactivate over time, if you just kept laying on spice, you’d become increasingly inured to its effects. Mind, there’s still natural preferences, thresholds, allergies, etc. I always lived spicy stuff growing up, while Arika subsisted on a diet of chicken tenders, pizza, and mac n cheese until, uh, she moved in with me :-D
I have always wondered if the taste for heat is learned or at least partially a genetic thing, similar to coriander/cilantro?
My personal journey started with my childhood home where the only thing where any spice was put in was the chili… and it was very mild (and maybe mild salsa but that’s just tomatoes). I left home and grew into Taco Bell mild sauce and mild chicken wings with heavy doses of ranch to counteract. Went to Thai and Indian restaurants for the first time and ordered everything mild. I laughed at people eating hot stuff when they got tears in their eyes and a flush. We had a single bottle of tabasco at my house growing up and I don’t know that it was ever used.
Then there was Chipotle. I started with the pork there which has almost no spice, and moved to the steak. On some days, the steak was mild-ish. On others, it was ridiculous (at the time). But I cried my way through lunch anyways, because I loved it. And the mild salsa was pico, which I hate, so I started getting the medium tomatillo salsa. I started digging the spice. I got cherry/banana peppers on my italian subs. I started getting spicier dishes at the Thai and Indian restaurants. I bought a bottle of Tabasco to keep at home for when stuff had zero flavor. Medium wings became a possibility.
And now, 18 years after starting college and this journey, I just bought several different bottles of hot sauce for my house on people’s recommendations. I put it on way too many things. I order stuff medium when I want a break and heat it up when I want to try something else out. I dump the amazing sauce from my local taco shop all over everything I order there. I learned all of this. My wife likes things spicy but she didn’t help me with this at all, by the by. I’m too stubborn.
No one in my immediate childhood family likes spicy stuff except my brother (who is not genetically related to me). Yet I am still pushing my limits. My children are regularly learning to like spicier things too. I think it’s almost completely environmental.
Your story mimics mine, we had ZERO spicy heat on anything while growing up. That seems like forever ago since I can now actually (mostly) eat a habanero, straight. I like it in food much better though. Like you, I don’t think anyone else in my family enjoys anything spicy.
But my journey has also led to some crazy things:
- Taco bell doesn’t even have a sauce hot enough anymore. :(
- I have discussions with my chile-head coworkers about the nuances in different insanely hot wing sauces. I consider myself the lightweight of that bunch.
- The manager of the Thai place specifically allows us to order “over five stars” their max rating, when we eat lunch there. But only because he recognizes us as idiots that love hot food.
- I have way, way too many different types of hot sauce and I really only use three of them.
- I bring my own sauces with me to restaurants sometimes. (I think this is when you realize you have a problem.)
I decided to something on the lighter side last night for GoT view, not lighter on wallet though!
That’s Sockeye salmon, because I generally don’t care for Atlantic, especially when I live on the pacific, and that’s me playing with a basmati rice, almond, artichoke and dill with a little lemon side.
Yowza. Yeah, this thread needs more fish. That looks fantastic. What are the greens? Baby spinach?
I have never had Sockeye salmon (that I know of), but now I want some!
Yep. I omitted the spinach in the list on accident. If I took more time, I might have added it to the rice sooner to wilt it more or cut it. I just kind of mixed it in there. The rice dish is primarily served cool, almost like a salad.
Yeah, that makes for a really nice summer meal. Substantial, but not heavy or sticky hot. Very fresh and bright.
Day one of Puerto Rican cuisine! My best friend in Raleigh and her boyfriend are both half Puerto Rican, so I tapped their expertise to put together a menu my own partner and I might enjoy. It begins with asopao de camarones (shrimp soup) and tostones (fried green plantains)!
The soup has a base that included fresh onions, sweet peppers, bell pepper, serrano, and garlic, plus some jarred sofrito, a can of Spanish style tomato sauce, adobo seasoning, and (cheat alert) a packet of sazon con achiote y culantro. After sautéing all that, in went a bunch of fish broth and medium grain rice, which boiled together for 20m before I added in the shrimp and some frozen mixed veggies which I’d thawed and broiled to give a little color. I finished with a mix of chopped herbs: cilantro and culantro.
The plantains are easy enough. Peel, chop into inch long sections, and soak in adobo-seasoned water for 15m. Gently fry in oil till soft, turning to prevent too much browning, then cool and drain. Smash in a tostonera or just with something heavy, dip into the seasoned water again, and refry until all the inner plantain that mooshed out gets crispy. Sprinkle with salt and serve hot!
That soup looks great! How was the taste of it? Even when I went to Puerto Rico on a vacation I didn’t sample much local cuisine, my trip just wasn’t long enough to do much.
So I guess I’m curious as to what the major flavors are for the cuisine?
The soup was really nice! It was sort of gumbo-esque thanks to the onions and peppers, but with a Creole side to it thanks to the tomato, but then you get the spices from the Adobo and Sazon + the vinegary saltiness of the olives playing against the sweetness of the shrimp, all tied together by the broth-enriched rice. I really, really liked it a lot.
Common PR flavoring/base ingredients include sofrito (usually made with some mixture of garlic, onion, bell pepper, sweet chilies, cilantro, culantro, and/or oregano), usually tossed in and sautéed early on like an Indian masala or the Cajun trinity; tomatoes, vinegar, beer or wine, alcaparrado (mixture of olives, capers, and pimento), Adobo (seasoning blend with salt, garlic, pepper, and turmeric), and Sazon (a similar seasoning blend that also adds cumin, coriander, ground achiote/annatto, and MSG). There’s a good amount of chicken, pork, beef, fish, and shrimp, along with lots of root vegetables (potatoes, taro, yucca), squash (including chayote), beans (esp. pink, but sometimes black), musa (bananas and plantains), corn, carrots, and peas.
What ya wind up with among the “staples” are somewhat heavy dishes with a good mix of earthy and herby flavors, usually lightened by an acidic note. There’s also an unusual acceptance of sweet among the savory, as semi- or fully ripened plantains will often show up where, say, pasta or bread might in other cuisines (e.g., pastellon, which is basically a beef-and-plantain-slice “lasagna”). Partly due to some economic/colonization factors, a lot of the traditional Taino cuisine has been dominated by ingredients brought in by the US in the last century or so, leading to a less healthy cuisine overall (much like what was seen by continental Native Americans) with lots of frying and starches.
This week, I’ll also be preparing (fate and kitchen willing) arroz con gandules (flavorful rice with bacon and green pigeon peas cooked into it), sauteed chayotes (a sort of squash), pastellitos con guava y queso (puff pastries stuffed with guava jam and cream cheese), pernil (a roasted, skin-on pork shoulder marinated in garlic, pepper, oregano, vinegar, and olive oil), garlicky-vinegary green beans, and bacalaitos (fried fritters made with shredded “salt cod” a preserved seafood product).
I’m missing some classics like mofongo (a mashed mixture of–usually–fried plantain, chicharrones [fried pork skins], garlic, oregano, pepper, and oil), guisado (a meat-and-potato stew with olives), habichuelas (stewed pink beans, often with pumpkin and olives), pasteles (the Puerto Rican tamale, made with a base of green bananas and root veggies like taro or yucca), and picadillo (a sort of beanless chili). But there’s always next time :-D
(When I decide to start learning about a new cuisine, I, err, tend to go a little deep)
Reminds me of Cuban food, and that makes complete sense. I’ve used a lot of those flavorings (Adobo and Sazon) as well as the appropriate veg/herb mix (sofrito,) but didn’t know they were associated with Puerto Rican flavors. That being said, I have never used a lot of those ingredients, so it sounds different and yummy to me.
Kudos on you for wanting to learn and add to your repertoire, Armando.
Yeah; I got some Cuban websites when I was Googling around for sure. There’s also a lot over overlap with Dominican cuisine from what I’ve seen. I think (guess, really) that Cuban food may lack the heavy African influence seen in other parts of the Caribbean, which adds an interesting element to, for instance, Puerto Rican food.
Of course, if you ask my best bud, those damned Cubans and Dominicans ruin the flavors with their [insert remaining rant]. Of course, the same can also be said for the neighbor that uses cilantro instead of culantro, so really, I think it’s mostly household/family recipe pride, which I’m pretty familiar with, being half-Cajun :)
Sazon is my favorite seasoning, because the usage instructions say something like “use 1 packet for every 4 people you are serving”, which is just a hilarious way to identify quantity for a spice.
My dad lived in Puerto Rico when growing up, the visible impact of which are importing 2 dishes into our family repertoire: arroz con pollo (con chorizo) - basically paella sans seafood, and the aforementioned habichuelas - although with chorizo rather than squash.
Obviously, they’re both just an excuse to eat chorizo. Chorizo is great.
I agree, chorizo is fantastic. We had breakfast burritos over the weekend with eggs, chorizo, onions and cheese. So good.
Chorizo is my “if in doubt, add it” ingredient. Pasta dish a bit boring? Add some chorizo. Want to spice up some eggs? Add chorizo. Need some meat to offset a vegetable/seafood oriented dish? Add some chorizo.