[Sca-cooks] Hot Peppers

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Margali, i am not assuming your message was directed exclusively at
me, since i consider messages posted to the list to be part of a
conversation among many participants, but i will respond...

I realize that people taste the same foods differently. My brother
says almonds taste unpleasantly metallic to him. Another friend has a
similar response to dried apricots. I find many prepared foods to be
unpleasantly sweet that many people find pleasant.

I think that these differences among humans are fascinating. As i
said before, we can only experience the world through our own bodies,
and in every way they differ, including how we taste foods, see
colors, and hear sounds, not to forget our sense of touch (the
sensations against our skin, not just touching things with our
hands). These discussions point up these differences in perception
and are very interesting to me. I love the heterogeneity of humans.

margali wrote:
>Ummm  2 things.
>
>imprimis, you may be misunderstanding terms.
>
>Many people consider spicy/pungent/*ultra-flavorful because of spicing*
>HOT. Not all heat is capsicum in origin.

I'm aware of that, as i mentioned a short list of non-casicum heat
inducing Medieval ingredients in a previous message, among them raw
garlic and ginger.

And the time i put a huge honkin' raw horseradish root in a food
processer to make a puree - whew! has to open the windows for quite a
long time! It was for a sauce from de Nola. In addition to the
horseradish, it included almonds and white wine with a little sugar
and a little salt and it came out delicious and relatively mild. But
the first step in processing it was painful, indeed.

>secundus, cinnamon IS hot. in the chemical burn your mouth way that
>capsicum is. to whit - atomic fireballs candy is hot by everybodies
>definition, and it is heatened with cinnamon oil.

The extracted oil is very pedas, and I know that foods and beverages
with cinnamon oil can be quite pedas.

But it's not what most of us use in cooking. I have not experienced
an increase in heat (pedas) with cinnamon sticks, either cassia or
true cinnamon, nor with cinnamon powder used in what i consider
normal quantities - and i cook and/or eat with some frequency
Southeast Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, North African,
Ethiopian, West African, and Mexican foods - after living in
Indonesia for several years, home of a variety of sambals, made from
chilis ground to a puree with the seeds left in - and the seeds are
pureed, too - and eating with Indonesian families - and even
Indonesians break into a sweat, have tearing eyes and running noses,
while eating sambals, but they consider that normal.

Personally, i dislike what i consider the overuse of cinnamon in
sweet baked goods in America, when there are so many other flavors
(sometimes the fruit alone is sufficient), since it lends a single
note to a wide variety of dishes (scones, muffins, pies, sweet
yeasted rolls, etc.)

However, in savory dishes, i find that cinnamon used with other
spices adds depth and richness to the flavor. I think cinnamon is
super with meat - which i was familiar with from all the ethnic
cooking i've been eating for almost 40 years - before i began cooking
Medieval food 3 years ago.

Only when what i consider an excess of powder is used, do i find that
cinnamon begins to seem even a little pedas - and at which level the
cinnamon flavor so dominates the dish as to be unpleasant, so that
whatever little heat there is is superceded by the excessive cinnamon
flavor.

Cloves and cardomom if used in excess also produce a bit of heat, and
i know from experience that clove oil is hot/pedas in the mouth
(applied to a tooth ache). However, when they are used in this
quantity, their flavors so dominate a dish that one can hardly taste
the other ingredients.

A personal illustration of the *hot* cinnamon oil or extract issue:

Back a decade or more ago - whenever it was that "Iron John" came out
and it became popular to have men's drumming circles, at a large
Pagan festival i attended, a group of men decided to have an all
men's ritual. So far, so good. As part of their anointing, the ritual
organizers decided to include cinnamon oil.

I know to use it with great caution, and dilute it with a neutral
vegetable oil, with my experience making soap from scratch, and
making ritual oils, incenses, bath salts and herbal bath bags.

But they were using straight cinnamon. The men in the circle were
naked. They were instructed to anoint their tender male genital
tissue with the cinnamon oil. Big mistake. I don't know if anyone
blistered, but many were in extreme pain.

I will add that since i'm not a man i didn't experience this
personally, but i did get to hear the stories the next day. I would
certainly know better than to apply it to my tender female genital
tissue - what a scary thought!

>Having dealt with flavor profile designers at US fodservices, i learned
>way more about commercialy prepared food products than i ever wanted;-)

Sounds interesting - and such knowledge probably induced more than a
little shuddering...

I read "Fast Food Nation", and i found the chapter on food flavorings
fascinating... Made me want to learn more about that aspect of the
food industry - and made me read the labels on processed foods i buy
with a new eye. (i always read labels before i buy - even familiar
products can change their ingredients)

Anahita