[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.