[CH] Hunan eye
mstevens@exit109.com
Wed, 31 Oct 2001 19:58:34 GMT
At 10:52 AM 10/31/01 -0800, Brent Thompson wrote:
>> Hmm, it makes me wonder, what happens where the culture of eating with
>> fingers intersects with a hot pepper cuisine? Is it common to get hunan
>> fingertips - that is, are there common folk sayings about pepper in the eye
>> (or anywhere)?
>
>In India, people normally eat using hands only, no utensils, and the food
>normally contains considerable chile content. During the 3.5 years I lived
>there, I never heard discussion of the problem of Hunan hand/eye nor ever
>personally imagined such a thing even existed. Maybe everyone is just used
>to it hence never notices. Or more likely, regardless how laden with
>chiles any food item is, it is still going to be way lower capsaicin
>concentration than the hot portions of the chiles that were added to it,
>and of course those chile hot portions are what we handle directly in order
>to get our very own Hunan hand/eye.
> --- Brent
Twice in recent months I managed to afflict myself with Hunan eye, the most
recent being the worst. I was mincing jalapenos for some corn bread and tasted
one of them (by the stem end, mind you, not the tip), and exclaimed loudly
about the mild chile. As a result I thought nothing of it when I rubbed my eye
like 15 minutes later. Eyyyow! Apparently that first jap was the only wimpy
one! This was one of those excruciating can't even open the eye jumping around
and wimpering events. Luckily, and I figure it was a result of an overall
resistance to capsaicin, after about 5 minutes crying into paper towels the
heat subsided. Of course this was all happening at the moment that dinner was
being served...
=Mark