Great Bowls of Fire

If you want to make a Texan see red, try the approach Barry Goldwater of Arizona used to tick off the late John Tower of Texas on the floor of the Senate back in 1974: "Senator," said Goldwater, "a Texan does not know chili from the leavings in a corral" and, with that, challenged Tower to a chili cook-off. As it turned out, the judges gave the nod to the Arizonan's mix of ground beef, chili powder and pinto beans--three ingredients Texans wouldn't allow in the same room with what they have come to regard as their state food.

That's the funny thing about hot, spicy food. Grown men who wouldn't know a roast beef from a rump steak work up an amazing sweat debating the perfect way to make chili, the most potent brand of Caribbean bottled hot sauce or where to find the Bangkok curry that will cauterize your lips.

Why? Because an appetite for foods that sear the tongue, make the eyes water and seem to levitate the top of one's head is undeniably macho. Hot food has become the culinary equivalent of walking on coals and seems to involve just as much braggadocio. Ernest Hemingway even went so far as to proclaim that his pungent bloody-mary recipe, which he introduced to Hong Kong society in 1941, "did more than any other single factor except the Japanese army to precipitate the fall of that crown colony." And Zubin Mehta, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, totes his own dried home-grown chilies, which he uses to perk up dull food.

The increase in the number of spicy food products attests to this growing obsession. More (continued on page 157) Bowls of fire(continued from page 121) than 100 new sauces and seasonings, including Jamaica Hell Fire, Crazy Cajun, Jamaican Jerk and Inner Beauty, will appear on specialty-store shelves this year (see Playboy's Guide to the Hot Stuff overleaf), along with chili-laced peanut butter, chocolate pepper cookies and chili-spiked caviar. In fact, the hot-food market is now estimated to rake in two billion dollars a year.

To top it off, hot-food fanatics have their own bimonthly, glossy magazine called Chile Pepper, which reviews hot products on the market and explores such topics as the religious rituals of South American Indians who believed the chili had mystic healing powers.

Much of the current interest in spicy foods has come out of the immigrant enclaves in cities such as New York, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and San Francisco. The food cultures of the Thais, Indians, Cubans, Jamaicans and Haitians, among others, are rich in hot foods. To maintain their traditions, these new Americans have opened an amazing range of restaurants specializing in spicy native foods, as well as grocery stores offering a wide array of hot sauces, marinades, chili peppers and other incendiary exotica.

The extraordinary success of Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme--and of Cajun food in general--also helped raise the heat tolerance of many Americans. Prudhomme's New Orleans restaurant, K-Paul's, turned many customers to converts with the wham-bam seasonings in signature dishes such as blackened seafood and prime rib.

Other American chefs have picked up the crusade for spicy, hot foods. At his namesake restaurant in Phoenix, chef Vincent Guerithault prepares shrimp-and-corn fritters with chipotle-chili mayonnaise and duck tamales with green Anaheim chilies and raisins. And Mark Miller at Santa Fe's Coyote Cafe uses a range of more than 35 chili peppers in dishes such as rack of lamb with rosemary and serrano-chili aioli, red chili and honey salmon fillet with black-bean-and-roasted-corn salsa and grilled-cheese sandwiches with poblano chilies.

The so-called new Texas cuisine has been defined by and built upon creations such as corn chowder studded with poblano and Serrano chilies from Dean Fearing at the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas and mussel soup with serranos served by Robert DelGrande at Cafe Annie in Houston. Even in the Midwest and on the East Coast, chefs are devising new ways to satisfy customers' cravings for hotter, spicier foods. At Chicago's trend-setting Topolobampo, chef Rick Bayless stuffs a corn crepe with ham, crab and poblano peppers. The eclectic menu at Biba in Boston features chef-owner Lydia Shire's lobster in a green-curry broth. And Bobby Flay's grilled-quail salad with poblano vinaigrette and loin-of-lamb chops with jalapeño preserves has made New York's Mesa Grill literally one of the hottest restaurants in town.

What really fascinates these chefs--and their customers--are the degrees of hotness and the levels of flavor from different peppers and spices. Hotness for its own sake is never a virtue, because if you blow the roof off your mouth, you're not going to taste much of anything afterward. The wallop packed into Japanese wasabi, American horseradish and German mustard may have the same effect on one's physiognomy as do smelling salts, but their inclusion in a dish is not meant to send the consumer reeling.

When it comes to chili peppers, the most common means of spicing up foods, individual responses vary widely. Some people are fairly immune to the power of the diabolically hot habanero pepper, while others wilt under the assault of a much milder jalapeño. Most people will build up a tolerance to chilies' heat, but it can take a while.

The good news for hot-food lovers, though, is that scientists have determined that chili peppers do a lot more good than harm to the digestive system. There's even evidence that eating chilies may be quite beneficial. For one thing, they stimulate the gastric juices, which spur the appetite and make digestion easier. And there seems to be evidence that they can help thin the blood and prevent undesirable clotting.

If you do indulge in hot, spicy food, there are sensible rules to follow. Remember to wash your hands thoroughly after handling a chili pepper. If you don't, the chili oil left on your fingers can badly sting your eyes or nose.

To temper the heat of the chilies, remove the hottest parts--the seeds and interior membranes--and to diminish their incendiary effects, cook them slowly with other foods. If you're preparing or eating a quick, stir-fried dish, pick out the chilies or risk mistaking a whole one for a string bean or carrot.

And lastly, when sampling hot food at a tasting, take your time and clear your palate frequently. "If you already have a high tolerance," says Dave DeWitt, editor of Chile Pepper, "take sips of beer between tastes. Starches like potatoes and rice work pretty well, too. If you really want to reduce the heat on your tongue, eat vanilla ice cream while you taste."

To get you started, here are a few great recipes.

Ernest Hemingway's Bloody Mary

(from Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917-1961) (concluded overleaf)

[recipe]Ice (preferably a single large block)[/recipe]

[recipe]1 pint Russian vodka[/recipe]

[recipe]1 pint chilled tomato juice[/recipe]

[recipe]1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce[/recipe]

[recipe]1 jigger fresh-squeezed lime juice[/recipe]

Celery salt, cayenne pepper and black pepper to taste

Esta Si Pican (Mexican hot sauce)

Put a big lump of ice in pitcher ("this to prevent too-rapid melting and watering of our product"). Mix in vodka, tomato juice and Worcestershire sauce. Stir, adding lime juice, celery salt, cayenne pepper and black pepper to taste, as well as a few drops of Esta Si Pican (Tabasco may be substituted). Keep stirring and tasting to see how it's doing. Drink up.

[recipe_title]Barry Goldwater's Arizona Chili[/recipe_title]

[recipe]1 lb. ground beef[/recipe]

[recipe]4 tablespoons peanut oil or corn oil[/recipe]

[recipe]1 lb. canned pinto beans[/recipe]

[recipe]1 6-oz. can tomato purée[/recipe]

[recipe]2 cups chopped onion[/recipe]

[recipe]3 tablespoons chili powder[/recipe]

[recipe]1 tablespoon cumin[/recipe]

[recipe]1/2 teaspoon salt[/recipe]

[recipe]1/2 cup water[/recipe]

In large skillet, brown beef in oil. Remove meat and drain off excess grease. Add pinto beans, tomato purée and onion and sauté for about two minutes. Mix chili powder, cumin and salt into water and pour into skillet. Bring to a boil, add meat, lower to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes. Serves six.

[recipe_title]Grilled-Tuna Tostada with Black-Bean Mango Salsa and Avocado Vinaigrette[/recipe_title]

(from the Mesa Grill, New York)

[recipe]6 4-oz. slices fresh tuna[/recipe]

[recipe]6 fried flour tortillas[/recipe]

Black-Bean Mango Salsa:

[recipe]1 cup cooked black beans[/recipe]

[recipe]1 cup diced mango[/recipe]

[recipe]1 red onion, diced[/recipe]

[recipe]1 fresh jalapeño, diced[/recipe]

[recipe]1/2 cup chopped cilantro[/recipe]

[recipe]1/2 cup lime juice[/recipe]

[recipe]2 ozs. olive oil[/recipe]

[recipe]Salt and pepper to taste[/recipe]

Avocado Vinaigrette:

[recipe]1/2 avocado[/recipe]

[recipe]1/2 fresh jalapeño[/recipe]

[recipe]2 tablespoons chopped red onion[/recipe]

[recipe]4 tablespoons lime juice[/recipe]

[recipe]1 tablespoon sugar[/recipe]

[recipe]1 cup olive oil[/recipe]

[recipe]Salt and pepper to taste[/recipe]

Grill or sauté tuna until seared and still rare inside. In bowl, combine all salsa ingredients and mix well. In blender, mix all vinaigrette ingredients except olive oil, then slowly pour in olive oil to emulsify. On a plate, layer a flour tortilla with salsa, then tuna, then vinaigrette. Serves six.

Hotsa plenty!