[CH] a tale of chiles
Shantihhh@aol.com
Sun, 25 Apr 1999 14:00:59 EDT
I have mentioned before my friend Kasma that teaches Thai cooking and thought
some of the CH folks would find this exert about our beloved chiles of
interest. If not hit delete. My husband and I took our first lessons in
Thai cooking from Kasma in 1985 and have been learning ever since especially
from the street vendors in Thailand! We were in Thailand and Burma again
this past Jan.
Mary-Anne
(From pages 69 to 71 of It Rains Fishes: Legends, Traditions and the
Joys of Thai Cooking, by Kasma Loha-unchit. Published by Pomegranate
Artbooks, 1995.
Tons of chillies are generously used every day in restaurants and homes
across the kingdom. In rural areas, just about every home grows its own
chilli bushes. Historical evidence, however, suggests that the many varieties
used in Thailand
are not indigenous to Asia but have migrated from the New World, to fulfill
their destinies in Thai kitchens. The path of these chillies parallels the
history of the Thai people themselves, whose ancestors -- a minority people
-- migrated from
Yunnan province in southern China to find a place they could call home.
Of all spicy flavors used in Thai cooking, the most popular comes from the
smallest of chillies, prik kee noo. Literally translated, the name means
"mouse shit chillies." The Thai word kee is not an impolite, dirty or obscene
swear word like "shit." Besides meaning excrement, it is used widely to form
compound words that imply some kind of waste or residue. For instance, kee
dta ("eye shit") refers to the particles of "sleep" in your eyes when you
wake up in the morning; kee
hoo ("ear shit") is ear wax; kee bu-ree ("cigarette shit") is cigarette
ashes; kee peung ("bee shit") is beeswax and kee reuay ("saw shit") is
sawdust. The word also appears in countless compound words that emphasize the
abundance of
particular qualities, such as kee len ("playful shit"), one who is very
playful; kee mao ("drunken shit"), someone who likes to drink and get drunk;
kee lerm ("forget shit"), a very forgetful person; kee aai ("shy shit"), a
very bashful person; kee niow ("sticky shit"), one who is very stingy (stingy
people hate to part with anything) and kee moh ("bragging shit"), a braggart.
Why mouse shit chillies? Mice are playful little creatures and like to hide.
(Thai children are taught from the time they can talk to refer to themselves
with the personal pronoun "mouse," or noo. We never say "I," but noo did this
and noo did
that.) Sometimes the only clues that tell us they have been around are the
tiny food scraps or droppings they leave behind. Thai chillies are little
guys much like mice, and they leave behind unseen evidence in the food they
touch -- but you definitely know they have been there! Like mice, they like
to hide, under cilantro leaves and behind pieces of shrimp and other food
particles. When you least suspect, they find their way into your mouth and
wow! What a sensation! You may even cuss and swear with the "s" word itself.
Prik kee noo is sometimes called "bird pepper." I'm not sure of the origin of
this name; someone once told me it is the name of a similar pepper in some
African cultures. Maybe birds feed on these peppers and have helped spread
them from
continent to continent. Birds are immune to the heat in chillies because they
do not have taste buds that register the hot sensation like humans and land
mammals do. However, chillies do have notable effects on certain birds. They
say, for instance, that the hill myna birds, kept as pets by many Thais,
especially in the south, are much more gregarious and eloquent in their
language skills when fed lots of prik kee noo (so are many humans). These
very smart birds from the tropical rain forests can emulate most sounds they
hear, much like parrots. Walking down the sidewalks in the southern port town
of Krabi, don't be surprised if a shiny black-feathered creature with a
bright orange beak, an iridescent yellow stripe on either side of its face
and a curtainlike flap of the same bright color extending from the corner of
one eye to the other woos you, letting out first gkaeow jah ("Hi there,
parrot"), followed by "Have you eaten yet?" (in Thai, of course) and a quick,
robust, very humanlike laugh.
According to historical accounts, the Portuguese were the "birds" who dropped
chilli peppers into the hands of our ancestors in the sixteenth century,
after initially transporting them from their place of origin in South America
to Europe.
Some accounts suggested that chillies, because of their high concentration of
vitamin C, were eaten by sailors together with ginger, as a preventative
against scurvy, long before it was discovered that oranges could perform the
same function.
Researchers believe all the different kinds of chilli peppers around the
world are descendants of the original "mother" pepper that grew on Bolivian
soil. Having traveled far and wide and having been grown under all kinds of
conditions and
in different types of soils, the chilli pepper picked up new characteristics
and changed. Breeding by various mentors on many continents added innumerable
strains. The little prik kee noo is a Thai-bred variety, now called "Thai
chillies" when
sold in Western markets. Small and slender, they are intensely hot. The
smaller they are, the hotter they seem to be. In fact, there is a strain of
prik kee noo called prik kee noo suan, which is no larger than the head of a
nail but packs a wallop of
a bang. So don't look down on little things; there is much spiciness and
liveliness concentrated in small, unsuspecting packages. Beware of these tiny
mice for they can reduce a big and burley meat-and-potatoes man to nothing
but a pool of
tears. Their hotness, however, is not the only quality that has endeared them
to the Thai people: they have a distinctive fragrant taste that spicy food
enthusiasts grow to love. Substituting with other kinds of chillies sometimes
can be disappointing.
In Thailand, dinner tables are set not with salt and pepper shakers but
instead with these tiny chillies cut up and swimming in a dish of fish sauce
(nahm bplah). Try making some for your next Thai meal. Cut the chillies in
small thin rounds, place
them in a sauce dish and cover with fish sauce. Spoon chillies and sauce over
whatever needs pepping up and ,after a few times, you may find yourself
addicted to these lovable mice. One of my American friends developed such a
liking for these
little chillies that after spending a few months traveling around Thailand,
one of his favorite breakfasts became Thai-style fried eggs over plain
steamed rice, which he spiced up with spoonfuls of nahm bplah prik, prik kee
noo in fish sauce.
(Thai people like to fry their eggs in very hot oil, making the edges of the
whites crispy while the yolks are still partially
soft.)
Prik kee noo chillies turn from a deep green to a bright red when they ripen.
The green ones have a very strong and immediate bite to them, while some of
the red ones may delay releasing their full potency, catching up with you
when you
are unsuspecting. They can be just as hot as the green ones. If you are not
using your batch of Thai chillies fast enough, they dry easily for future use
by being left out uncovered on a plate in the kitchen. The red ones dry more
easily than the
green ones, which require more air circulation and light. Placing them on a
wire rack out in the sun will speed up their drying. Thai chillies dry well
because they are not fleshy like larger varieties such as jalapenos or
serranos; they are
primarily a bag of seeds held together by a thin skin. Never bother to go
through the tedious task of deseeding them. I usually do not remove seeds
from any kind of fresh chilli peppers except when I use the larger kinds of
dried red chillies
for making chilli pastes with a roasted flavor. Then I remove the seeds and
discard them since the roasted dried pods are more flavorful, and I add more
pods until the desired chilli flavor, roasted aroma and heat level are
obtained.
Besides prik kee noo, there are many other kinds of chillies used in Thai
cooking. Among them are prik leuang, an orangish yellow chillie with good
flavor and quite hot, though nothing close to a prik kee noo suan; prik chee
fah, dark
green or bright red when ripe, about the same size and hotness as a serrano;
and prik yuak, a larger, light green pepper similar to the yellow wax pepper.
Most are larger than prik kee noo and come in varying colors, shapes and
spiciness, but
none is quite as hot as the little mice. Because these other types of
chillies are not yet readily available in Western markets, the jalapeno,
serrano, fresno and yellow wax peppers, carried by many American
supermarkets, may be substituted, as
they have been in many of the recipes in this book.
Because chillies are useful not only for their heat but also for their unique
and distinctive flavors, the many different varieties are used in a wide
range of dishes and sauces to enhance the tastiness of particular meats,
vegetables and seafoods.
It is not wise to stick to using only one kind of chilli for everything just
because we are crazy about it. After all, the more flavor variables we have
at our disposal, the more possibilities exist for creating masterpieces for
the sophisticated palate.