by Kevin Burton
I am a proud, practicing pepperhead. Some like it hot, I like it hotter.
I go to a restaurant and look for that little flame icon next to the entrées, to know which ones might contain a little heat. That search though is sometimes unrewarded.
I’ve (mostly) stopped ordering the General Tso’s chicken at my favorite Chinese restaurant because it just isn’t hot enough.
Went to the local butcher shop last week and purchased “extra hot” hot links. They were hot-ish but not really hot.
When you’re hot you’re hot, when you’re not you’re not.
I get it though. The kind of food I think is truly hot, you can’t sell to unsuspecting people. That would be risking a lawsuit.
I learned a little something recently from the Interesting Facts website about a geographical tie to jalapeño peppers. And this is about a place in Mexico I have visited.
“Jalapeños are often the pepper of choice for adding a little spice to any dish — a fact that’s probably been true for millennia,” reads a post on the Interesting Facts website
The horticulture of chile peppers in general dates back to between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, and they may even have been one of the first crops domesticated in America.
“Chile seeds have been found in 9,000-year-old Mexican archaeological sites, uncovered in 7,000-year-old caves in South America, and described in the myths and rituals of Indigenous cultures in Central and South America.”
“But although there are many members of the Capsicum genus, only one eventually became the predominant pepper for nachos and tacos in the U.S. — and its namesake is the capital of the Mexican state of Veracruz, Xalapa (the X is pronounced as an H).
“Xalapa comes from the Nahuatl” (a language spoken by the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican groups) word xalli, meaning “sand,” and apan, meaning “spring,” and it was from this fertile “spring in the sand” that jalapeños first took root.”
“Even today, residents of Xalapa are known as “Xalapeños,” which simply means “from Xalapa,” according to the website.
I spent a couple of days in the city of Veracruz with some college friends many moons ago. Until now I have always thought Veracruz, a happening town with a nice stretch of beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, was the capital of Veracruz state.
Jalapeño slices are a staple at my house, like chicken soup. I run out of jalapeños, I get more. If a neighbor came over to borrow jalapeño slices, and we didn’t have any, I would truly be embarrassed.
But if we are ever out of jalapeños it is not, repeat NOT, the fault of my wife Jeannette. She won’t eat them, won’t get near them. “Who ate the last of the jalapeños” is not a question at my house, the way “who ate the last Oreo cookies” might be.
In my youth, I would order the “blazin” wings from Buffalo Wild Wings and knock them down like they were Sweet Tarts. One concession to age, I now order a dozen “wild” wings and may or may not order six blazin.
One of my co-workers called those blazin wings, “a cry for help.”
Not so for me. Back in the day I was calling for more. And more and more.
I am reminded by the website that jalapeños aren’t the hottest or even close to the hottest peppers.
“Although first domesticated in the Americas, jalapeños made the eastward journey across the Atlantic sometime in the mid-16th century, then spread worldwide through the vast expanse of Spanish and Portuguese empires. Today, their popularity comes in part from their versatility — they’re delicious fresh, roasted, or pickled,” according to the website.
“They’re also milder than some other popular peppers: Compared to habanero peppers (which, coincidentally, mean “from Havana”), jalapeños are 35 times less spicy, according to the Scoville scale used to measure spiciness. That helps make them the go-to pepper for any Mexican-inspired recipe, at least for those who can’t stand the heat.”
Page 7 