How spicy do you like your food?

Hot enough to be enjoyable. My GOD I love green peppers though and I do like eating salsa with a spoon from the jar.

And slightly O/T but the M&S Fajita Kits are fucking amazing. I thought they'd just be slightly better than Old El Paso but it's completely different. The salsa has a massive kick to it for a start, and the seasoning actually looks natural. Really really tasty.

 

I think I actually get a bit of a buzz out of eating spicy food. Like when your nose runs... ooof.

 

The chilli buzz is acknowledged, I think. Your body releases endorphins to fight the heat of the chilli, and endorphins are the body's natural opiates, so I guess it all sort of makes sense.

 

Just to go back to Vauxhall chat, there's a brilliant Indian restaurant there called Hot Stuff.

I like hot food but not overly hot. I'd never eat a vindaloo or anything. The thing is that I hate blind heat, but there are super hot foods that are really tasty. Fresh chillies can taste lovely, but just chucking a load of chili powder into something is just heat and no flavour.

I love 'bland' food too though. Bread and butter makes me happier than most foods.

 

It's ALL empty heat for me, believe me. Nothing 'super hot' (or even what a lot of people call mild) has any sort of flavour. My mouth is destroyed as soon as it gets to my taste buds. And like I said, it kills the flavour in everything else as well.

Thinking about it though, I do like the smokiness of paprika (in fairly small quantities), and can appreciate the flavour of that, and how it can be used to enhance others. And that's from the same family, isn't it?

 

mmmmmmm paprika.

See, paprika isn't at all hot to me - it's just warm.

 

Isn't paprika from a CAPSICUM? i.e. a BELL PEPPER?

I'm not a chilli fiend. I do cook with chillies and I do like some chilli in my food. I think with the right dish, it can enhance flavour and different chillies have different flavours. However, I am VERY happy with bland food. I ate all of my cousin's breaded fish, boiled veg and mash at the hospital this eve.

 

Chilli is from the capsicum as well though, isn't it?

 

Louf and Lolly are UTTER PUSSIES.

I don't need to spice to BLOW ME INTO NEXT YEAR, but I can rarely resist a fiery food. If my stomach isn't waking me up at 6am complaining about it, then it just doesn't cut the MUSTARD SEED.

 

Oooh research suggests that paprikas can vary in heat and can be made from both red chillies AND bell pepper. Hmmn.

 

I love pepper, pepper makes almost everything better, you just have to know how to accentuate your food. Most of the time i just squeeze on the pepper juice. I chop bits of jalapeno on my pizza.

Me and a friend tried a stuffed onion pepper thing from a hispanic street vendor. I thought i'd have to go to the ER and she threw up. So theres a few levels of heat acceptance over my threshold.

 

Depends on the food, I tend to add a bunch of ground black pepper when I'm looking for flavor but for Thai, Mexican, Indian etc. moderate spiciness is GOOD

 

I'm a bit RIDICULOUS. I put tabasco on literally EVERYTHING, use Chilli Flakes instead of Salt, put FUCKLOADS of pepper on everything and get a sauce imported from Bolivia which is illegal to be sold in the US cause it's so hot.

I'd say "YES", I like spicy food...

 

Having said that, though, I hate just "heat", it's got to have flavour behind it. Really hot curries are rubbish cause they're just HOT HOT HOT, so I tend to go for a lower one (say, a "Balti" or something like that) and ask them to spice that up instead...

 

I don't think that Nandos is a good measure of how hot you can handle food because the sauces on the different heat choices are all different. I know someone who can handle "extra hot" but not "hot".

I really want to go for Nandos now.

 

I have absolutely NO CONCEPT of when they first came to the UK. I went to my first one in 2004 and I'd not heard of them before that. I think someone told me 1992 before and I was shocked.

 

I went to one in my first year of uni in London

I can't say I RUSH to go to one, but it's alright enough. Haven't been in AGES, mind...

 

It's the QUEUEING in Nando's to order some old tat which will then be brought to the table that I CAN'T STAND

Also, when we were in the Angel branch, I could have sworn that I heard SCREAMS

 

Mmmm Nandos.

 

We went to Nandos the other day. I had a bean burger pitta and it was much nicer than the chicken TBH.

 

I am perplexed that there doesn't appear to be a middle ground for a lot of you. I've always had an aversion to really hot food (which might seem strange coming from soneone with an Indian background but it isn't). Hence I like to think because as a child I was overly cautious with anything containing chillies I have retained my tastebuds and as a result, don't find anything 'bland'.

However it also means that I can enjoy chilli in moderation as an adult. I still can't take anything too hot but I vehemently disagree with people who say that chili only provides 'empty' heat. It doesn't if it is used properly. It has a complex flavour all of its own!

Also both Mexican and Indian food is not hot by default. There are hundreds of dishes which are mildly spiced (not bland) - you'll just find it tough to find them in your local takeaway joints is all. .Particularly with Indian food; it was the Portugese who introduced chillies to India - before that they never used them.

 

Who?

You and friends?

 

PIPE DOWN.

 

:smoke:

 

I don't deny it may have, for you. But we all taste and smell things differently; and for me there is just absolutely nothing, but degrees of heat. And it reaches a level which annihilates anything else I'm eating at a relatively low level. Perhaps I am missing out on an array of flavours that you experience when you have it; but as I don't taste it like that, I don't know.

 

A grapefruit is far more offensive to my palate than a chili is.

 

Me too. I genuinely can't eat grapefruit. I don't know how anyone can manage it. I would rather eat 20 raw lemons than one grapefruit.

 

I quite like grapefruit. I can't remember the last time I bought one, but if it's in a fruit salad or something I'm happy enough to eat it.

I do prefer the smell to the taste, though.