Hot Stuff
How much spice is
humanly possible?
By Lindsay Sterling
Sudha’s display of spices looked
like a painter’s pallet of India: turmeric yellow, brown cloves, white salt, brilliant
orange-red chili powder—not the maroon stuff you find at the supermarket. Sudha
and her husband, Venu, were teaching me how to make their favorite dish:
chicken biryani. It’s a mixture of spiced rice, bone-in chicken, sauce and
cashews, baked together and served with raw sliced onion, lime wedges,
hard-boiled eggs and a cooling yogurt sauce called raita.
“Usually, if I prepare biryani, my
friends will come over,” Said Sudha. Venu added, “When I’m home and Sudha’s
cooking, by the time it’s done, half is gone. She knows this. She adds more
chicken now from the start.”
When the couple was giving me a
lesson on tandoori chicken for a story last fall (Portland Phoenix, Oct. 17,
2012) I couldn’t believe my eyes when they put a whole quarter cup of spices into
a bowl of 12 drumsticks. Here they were again, adding more spice than I thought
reasonable for a meal. A half of a cup of ground spices went into the biryani marinade,
including salt, red chili, dried plums with pits, fenugreek seeds, dill seeds,
turmeric, cinnamon, black pepper, cumin, nigella seeds, bay leaf, fennel, brown
cardamom, ginger, garlic, clove, black cumin, and dried papaya powder.
Then they proceeded to add 14 fresh
super-hot green chilis in the cooking process. I’m still trying to figure out
what species these chilis were. I’m guessing they’re birds-eye chilis which are
twenty times hotter than a jalapeno. They also might be green Guntur Sannam
chilis which are native to Sudha and Venu’s home state of Andhra Pradesh. Sudha
insisted that they’re just called “green chilis.”
Then
they added another quarter cup of
whole dried spices: bay leaves, black cardamom pods, black cumin, cinnamon bark
pieces, green cardamom pods, star anise, cloves and mace. Mace is the dried casing
of the nutmeg nut. Each piece looks like a thumb-sized dried jellyfish.
Part of me doesn’t know why my eyes
were popping out of my head. Everyone knows Indian food is spicy. Duh, there
are a lot of spices in it. But when cooking this dish at home, I had to
physically force my hand to put in as much spice as Sudha had. Put. In. The spice, Lindsay. Put it in. Do
it. What was I scared of? Pain? Death? Extreme flavor?
One research study in 1980 found
that 3 pounds of dried really spicy chili powder eaten at once by one 150-pound
person can be deadly. Well, there was nowhere near that amount in the biryani
so imminent death wasn’t the issue. Sudha and Venu said while we were eating
that they like spiciness of the food to bring them to “the verge of pain.” “I
do, too,” I said. But here was my fear: what if the same amount of spice could
send an Indian to the blissful verge of pain but an American over the edge to writhe
in a pool of sweat and tears?
The chicken biryani they served me
was awesome: spicy, yet balanced, invigorating, exciting, right on the verge of
pain. Perfect! But then I asked them for the truth. Sheepishly, not wanting to hurt
my feelings, they gave it to me. If I hadn’t been their guest, they would have
used 25 green chilis instead of just 14. Even though I told them I like 5-star-spicy?
Even so. After all, I was American.
copyright Lindsay Sterling 2013
