Global Warming

The one who spice them all, bhut jolokia

No.... no........ no........... I'm not following Al Gore's footsteps and start preaching about Global Warming but it's a title of a piece of articles I read in Time which I find very spot-on. It's about the chili conquering the world of culinary. (Come on people! Chili, hot, warm? Now chili everywhere? Global warming? Get it?) Creativity is what I always find fascinating.

I got to know from the article that chili that we over this part of the world, only associated it with Thai food, Sichuan sizzling hot steamboat, Indian spicy cuisine or the "play-to-death-in-variety-TV-program" tabasco, is actually originated from South America. Now that explains Hot Peri Peri Chicken in Nando's perhaps?

I wouldn't delve into how the chili got exported from South America to this part of the world and the whole process as you can imagine how it happened just like other spices and religion spread in general.

I'm more interested to share with you all that chili "hotness" actually can be measured!!! Just like we measure temperature in deg C, deg F or K, or noise in desibel, dB, the hotness of chili is measured in SHUs (Scoville Heat Units) invented by the American chemists in 1912.

Certification of bhut jolokia as the hottest spice

According to the article, the spiciest Thai chilies come in at around 100,000 SHUs. Most people will be reduced to tears by eating anything above 200,000 SHUs. The hottest of them all is a type of chili grown bhut jolokia also known as the Naga Chili, grown in the northeastern part of India which recorded a SHUs of 855,000, a whopping 4 times the tolerance level of normal people before turning into a crying baby.

Why people enjoy such spicy/hot to the extreme dish is definitely beyond me. Yeah, I am that dull, I dun even enjoy eating fries with tomato or chili sauce. I remember watching in TV about a stall in Taipei which sells spicy mee and they had a "billboard chart" to list the names of their customers who successfully consume the hottiest mee that they ever prepared. Hmm...... I don't understand.