OCTOBER: HOT AND BOTHERED OVER CHILLIES; MAKING A MEAL OF IT AT MEYHANES; THE APPEAL OF “REAL” RESTAURANTS
Pie in the sky
There’s more than one way of eating up in the air
Gulf Air has SkyChefs, but employees at this new dining concept need a real head for heights. Dinner In The Sky offers people the chance to perch 50 metres above ground to eat their meal at a table suspended from a crane.
The concept, developed by Belgians David Ghysels and Stefan Kerkhofs, has already served diners in Brussels, Paris, London and Lisbon. The table seats 22 people, strapped in by racing car-style seatbelts – all you need is room for the 90-tonne crane that is used to hoist the five-tonne structure into place, US$12,000 for the rental (which doesn’t include food) and a strong stomach. www.dinnerinthesky.com
Hot stuff
The chilli is central to Thailand’s cuisine and culture – and, says Victor Paul Borg, it may even be good for you
We were having dinner at a resort in Thailand when the glass windows and doors blew in. The typhoon forced us to run to the kitchen, where we found the cook shaking with fear and heaping chilli on the gas burner. The acrid smell from the smouldering pods was like pepper spray, choking us and making our eyes water. We began to cough and the cook said, “Sorry, Thai culture”.
Thais believe in the power of chilli to ward off tragedy and evil. If sickness or misfortune befalls a household, dried pods are burned to exorcise the bad spirits. If someone in the community displays obnoxious or malevolent behaviour, people burn chilli when the wind is wafting towards the offensive neighbour’s house.
The potency of capsaicin, the pungent ingredient of chillies, is impressive. Its fieriness belies the fact it’s present in minute quantities in chilli pods – in the flesh, not the seeds, as most people think. Prik kee noo (bird chilli) – Thailand’s endemic variety – is among the hottest and Thais consume it avidly; which is strange given that chilli is not indigenous to Thailand. The mother plant is native to Bolivia and Brazil; it was taken to southeast Asia by the Portuguese in the 16th century and rapidly incorporated into Thai cuisine.
David Thompson, author of the book Thai Food, believes Thais took to chilli so wholeheartedly because of “a similar pre-existing flavour that was popular, namely galangal and peppercorns, which – when combined – taste like chilli, but with a drier heat”.
Now the plant is widely cultivated and it has also spread to the wild in Thailand. Seeds are dispersed by birds, which are immune to the spiciness of the fruit. Among the more voracious eaters is the common myna and Thais believe mynas can learn how to speak because they eat chilli.
Thai food is renowned as the spiciest in the world (the Mexicans eat a high proportion of chilli as raw accompaniments, but Thais use more chillies in their cooking). Fresh, chopped bird chillies go into most dishes – these can be red or green (the red chillies go in at the start of the cooking process and the green ones are added at the last minute to retain their strong aroma). Other dishes feature a dried and deep-fried chilli, which imparts a roasted flavour.
Still more fieriness comes in the form of pre-prepared or manufactured pastes, the most numerous of which are chilli sauces. These are followed by
half-a-dozen curry pastes – such as green or red curry paste, mainly used in coconut-cream curries. All of these pastes are spooned into sauces and soups in a myriad ways.
Then there are specialised dipping sauces for grilled fish (green chilli, lemon, lemongrass and fish sauce), grilled meats (dried flaked red chilli, lemon, fish sauce and roasted ground rice) and spring rolls, patties, or tempuras (a sweet puree of red chilli, sugar and vinegar). As if all of this was not enough,
no dining table in Thailand is complete without three jars of condiments: chopped chilli in fish sauce (containing red for spiciness and green for aroma), chopped chilli in vinegar and dry flaked chilli.
In north-east Thailand, where people believe someone who can’t tolerate spicy food is a wimp, pungency levels reach feverish intensity and traditional dishes have now spread throughout the country. These include tom yam (a super-hot fish soup, often containing prawns) and som tam (a salad, the main ingredients of which, aside from chillies, are shredded green papaya and crushed raw crabs).
Yam salads, featuring shards of boiled meat or seafood, are also popular and are regularly shared as finger food while drinking; this increases their relative spiciness. I relish the hot bite of these salads with beer, causing my drinking companions to warn me that chilli can give me cancer or a stomach ulcer. I hear these claims regularly and there was a time when these allegations caused me some consternation, but now I can take comfort in the latest scientific research.
In a study at Bangkok’s Mahidol University last year, Dr Prapasri Laohavechvahich demonstrated that chilli suppresses the development of mutations – which can lead to cancer – triggered by urethane (a chemical compound used in the manufacture of pesticides and fungicides, for instance).
“Capsaicin can be a potential carcinogen or a co-carcinogen, but the substantial body of data shows the compound to be chemo-preventive or chemo-protective,” says Dr Prapasri. “In the final analysis, chilli is good for a healthy body that has a good repairing system, but bad for someone with a stomach ulcer and an inadequate repairing system.”
The other beneficial health effects of capsaicin are multi-farious. Chilli’s high vitamin C and beta-carotene content also makes it an anti-oxidant, which means it impedes oxidation, the process by which cells are damaged, thereby causing a raft of conditions, ranging from diseases to ageing. Another property of capsaicin is the inhibition of platelet aggregation; platelets can form into clots in major blood vessels, which eventually can cause serious heart disease, and capsaicin counteracts this formation.
So should the rest of the world eat as much chilli as devotees in Thailand? “There is no clear answer to the question ‘is chilli good for you?’,” Dr Prapasri says. “And there are no guidelines about how much chilli should be consumed.
“My advice to those who consume high quantities is to limit their intake to about 14 grams, or about six to eight chillies, per day.”
FEEL THE HEAT: THE CHILLI CHART
THE MILD
Kenyan or jalapeño chillis are widely used in Mexican cuisine
THE HOT
The Mexican habanero is one of the hottest chillis around; it is related to the Jamaican Scotch bonnet and the naga, found in Bangladesh
THE INSANELY HOT
Thumb-sized bhut jolokia, or “ghost chilli”, found in northeast India, was recently rated the world’s spiciest chilli
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