Fire in the Hole
Breakfast this morning was a reheated bowl of hot green chilis fried with ground meat. This is something like starting your day with a flame thrower shoved into your mouth.
The woman I'm staying with, Lily (who was my roommate in the Philippines), cooked it up last night so it would be ready to go first thing. She started with a huge bowl of spicy little chilis, sliced into single centimeter lengths, and a giant wok of smoking oil. The first frying wasn't too bad - fragrant, but not deadly. They didn't stay in the oil long before being removed to a waiting platter. Then into the wok, a few of the distinctly Sichuanese black peppers (hua jiao) that make your mouth feel numb, a few slivers of fresh ginger, and a whole lot of fresh oil preceding the ground pork pre-mixed with an egg, some starch and some salt.
It was the second frying of the chilis that got me.
Once the meat was cooked, which only took a second, Lily tossed all those little green devils back into the wok. When I started to cough, I switched to breathing through my nose. Every intake of air felt like some brutal new method of nasal hair-removal...those suckers BURN! When my face started to turn purple from the combination of coughing and holding my breath, Lily nodded and pitched more seasoning into the wok, telling me 'Very spicy, need extra salt.' Shortly after that I stumbled from the kitchen into the fresh air of the living room, choking and sputtering and spewing snot everywhere. Lily's husband looked bemused.
After Lily opened the window I tried again. I REALLY wanted to see the whole process, start to finish. When even she started sneezing I was done for. The second time I fled, I didn't try to return.
12 hours later, the spicy chili smell still burned the nostrils. I was skeptical about putting anything that could wreak so much havoc with my airways from the PAN into my MOUTH. And yet, isn't trying new things most of the joy of travel?
The first bite felt like someone had used a flame thrower to blast the inside of my mouth. I almost stopped after the first bite.
The second bite spread the fire down my throat, making me wonder if I would survive this whole food experiment.
And the third bite...felt normal. Totally, blissfully normal.
Unlike Korean spices, which tend to just overload your taste buds and make everything uniformly hot tasting, these little chilis somehow ease off into a complex of tastes and feelings inside your mouth the more you eat of them. This was a big revelation to me, after having always taken special care to pick the chilis OUT of my food before. But how can you pick out the chilis in a dish that is ALL chilis? Lily and her husband first looked worried, watching me eat, later elated. On her way out the door, me in the freshly aired kitchen doing the dishes, she said instead of goodbye, 'I hope the flavor of my chilis will live in your mind a long time!'
The woman I'm staying with, Lily (who was my roommate in the Philippines), cooked it up last night so it would be ready to go first thing. She started with a huge bowl of spicy little chilis, sliced into single centimeter lengths, and a giant wok of smoking oil. The first frying wasn't too bad - fragrant, but not deadly. They didn't stay in the oil long before being removed to a waiting platter. Then into the wok, a few of the distinctly Sichuanese black peppers (hua jiao) that make your mouth feel numb, a few slivers of fresh ginger, and a whole lot of fresh oil preceding the ground pork pre-mixed with an egg, some starch and some salt.
It was the second frying of the chilis that got me.
Once the meat was cooked, which only took a second, Lily tossed all those little green devils back into the wok. When I started to cough, I switched to breathing through my nose. Every intake of air felt like some brutal new method of nasal hair-removal...those suckers BURN! When my face started to turn purple from the combination of coughing and holding my breath, Lily nodded and pitched more seasoning into the wok, telling me 'Very spicy, need extra salt.' Shortly after that I stumbled from the kitchen into the fresh air of the living room, choking and sputtering and spewing snot everywhere. Lily's husband looked bemused.
After Lily opened the window I tried again. I REALLY wanted to see the whole process, start to finish. When even she started sneezing I was done for. The second time I fled, I didn't try to return.
12 hours later, the spicy chili smell still burned the nostrils. I was skeptical about putting anything that could wreak so much havoc with my airways from the PAN into my MOUTH. And yet, isn't trying new things most of the joy of travel?
The first bite felt like someone had used a flame thrower to blast the inside of my mouth. I almost stopped after the first bite.
The second bite spread the fire down my throat, making me wonder if I would survive this whole food experiment.
And the third bite...felt normal. Totally, blissfully normal.
Unlike Korean spices, which tend to just overload your taste buds and make everything uniformly hot tasting, these little chilis somehow ease off into a complex of tastes and feelings inside your mouth the more you eat of them. This was a big revelation to me, after having always taken special care to pick the chilis OUT of my food before. But how can you pick out the chilis in a dish that is ALL chilis? Lily and her husband first looked worried, watching me eat, later elated. On her way out the door, me in the freshly aired kitchen doing the dishes, she said instead of goodbye, 'I hope the flavor of my chilis will live in your mind a long time!'
posted by Roberta | 3:59 PM
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