When pain becomes a flavor

I've tried. I really have. I can't manage much more than medium salsa; chile-wise, I'm a wimp. Needless to say, if I can barely handle jalapeños, and serranos are absolute torture to me, habaneros and their horrifying relatives are right out. I'm probably the last person who should be writing this. But who cares; it's food science.

Okay, capsaicin. The term itself is from the Capsicum genus, home of the numerous species of chile pepper, and a relative of the immense Solanum genus which includes tomatoes, nightshade, eggplant, potatoes, and quite a number of more exotic relatives, and the name is from the Greek καπτω (kaptw), meaning "bite". Oddly enough, capsaicin (best known outside culinary use as the active ingredient in pepper spray, as well as, ironically, a topical analgesic) is a vanillin analogue that triggers a receptor for vanilloid compounds in mammals; we'll get back to that.

So I was at Ring Bros. in Dennis last week; I don't go there often, but it's a high-end grocery store that provides space for several other businesses, including a wine shop, a pizzeria, a fishmonger, and an outpost of the legendary Montilio's Bakery from Brockton. Being the sort of place they are, they brought in a shipment of two of the world's hottest peppers, the Bhut Jolokia from India and Trinidad Scorpion Butch T from Australia. Words do not begin to do justice to these monsters; both are relatives of the previously mentioned habanero, but please understand that they are four to six times the average Scoville rating of habaneros, putting them in the same category as law-enforcement type pepper spray. That's right, these are literally weapons-grade chiles. (Here's some videos of insane people.) It is highly advised at the very least to wear gloves, a mask, and goggles while working with them.

So, let's say you're crazy enough to try to eat one of these things. (The Trinidads were about $15 for a rather small pouch; the Bhut Jolokias were $9.) What happens? Well, for starters, it triggers that vanillin receptor we mentioned above. And triggers it. And triggers it. And triggers it. And since capsaicin is not particularly given to dissolving in water, it will stay there until it's washed away somehow (milk and bread soaked in olive oil are generally recommended; beer and water might actually make it worse). Capsaicin doesn't actually cause chemical burns in the traditional sense; what it does is trick the body into creating an inflammation where there's no actual damage. This is mostly harmless, which is why it's used as a common ingredient in less-than-lethal weaponry, and has also largely replaced mace as a deterrent spray, but it can be a real issue for people with breathing problems; triggering inflammation in asthmatic lungs is usually a very bad idea. In fact, humans are a little unusual in that some of us seek to develop tolerance for extreme amounts of capsaicin; most mammals won't bother, and where the Bhut Jolokia and relatives are grown in India, they're frequently used as elephant repellent. The Ring Bros. circular describes the Bhut Jolokia as having something of a carrot-like favor before the searing pain sets in, and some hint of a mint-like flavor that may actually be your taste buds curling up and surrendering into a coma. It does not give tasting notes on the Scorpion.

This is all by way of explaining what exactly capsaicin is for to begin with. Like many plants, chiles developed to be eaten by animals and have the seeds spread in their droppings. However, chile seeds are generally crushed by grinding teeth in mammal mouths; birds, on the other hand, don't have teeth and pass them through undamaged. As a result, natural selection has selected out of early Capsicum specimens brightly colored fruit (which birds will see easily, but non-primate mammals, who generally have limited color perception, generally tend to have trouble picking out) and capsaicin fiercely concentrated in the area around the seeds so that even if a mammal takes a bite, it's likely to drop the fruit before finishing it. (That area -- the white placental material and the seeds -- is what you'd cut out to reduce the heat in a recipe.) In fact, you can even still find something very close to that primordial chile pepper that set the trap for the rest; it's called a chiltepin (Capsicum annuum v. glabriusculum), and it's the ancestor of the bell pepper, cayenne pepper, and jalapeño. There's four other species grown by humans -- C. chinense, C. frutescens, C. pubescens, and C. baccatum; the hottest single species is chinense but they can hybridize, and our thermonuclear friends mentioned above are among these... abominations.

I can't honestly understand the love some people have for excessive heat. I do know that the world centers for hot food are China (especially Hunan food), Southeast and South Asia, North America, the Caribbean, and the UK; as noted, the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T comes from Australia, so there's probably an English language connection as well. (I would also note that apparently some chimpanzees have developed a taste for fire ants, which means a desire for masochistic food might be in our genes.) But I'm not the sort of person who can understand the mentality that makes you want to want to chomp down on the botanical equivalent of nerve gas either. However, there are plenty of people who do, so I provide the following recipes:

• Chicken Phaal: the name is from Bangladesh, but the "hottest curry in the world" is all Britain. This is the sort of thing you get to eat for free and have your picture on the wall of the restaurant if you can finish it.
• Nuclear tacos: This looks like a Portuguese recipe, but you get the general idea. There's a place in Texas that serves them at SXSW every year, or at least used to.
• Penne all'Arrabbiata: Okay, "angry penne" isn't supposed to be overwhelmingly spicy, but it is supposed to get you to sit up and take notice. If you're a hardcore chile-head, don't let mere moderation stop you.
• Wolfgang Puck's Kung Pao Chicken: Rare indeed it is to find a Chinese recipe that made it into Chinese-American kitchens without getting beaten into something unrecognizable on its home turf, but Kung Pao chicken/shrimp/whatever is one of the very few. It's also arguably one of the most famous dishes ever to get that little chile pepper dingbat printed next to it on the menu.
• Finally, although there's plenty of companies specializing in chile seeds out there, this one might have the most winceful name, and definitely some of the best tasting notes.