an armchair food historian and epicure I find joy in reading about the uses of chiles across the globe. One of the things I truly love is browsing recipes from dissimilar cultures and regions containing chiles and realizing that the similarity of basic chile paste is the same. Certainly in some regions ingredients are different due to availablity (ex. galangal) but the basic quartet of chiles, garlic, citrus, and salt are all the same. Some recipes call for a sweetener. Some call for dried chiles, others fresh. Some recipes have more than a dozen (some kari and other curries and moles).
Not to sound touchy feely "We Are the World"-y but this commonality in recipes and love of chiles redeems my faith in humanity a little or at least brings out a feeling that food can create bridges between people and can allow individuals to self-educate about cultures other than their own. It also lead to the imperialistic Western European drive across the globe but we're gonna just gloss over that. That whole sugar and slavery thing...yeah, that was kind of a catastrophe. However without the Spanish conquest of the Western Hemisphere there wouldn't be nam prik or sambal or zhoug or doro wat (okay there would still be doro wat but it wouldn't be so damned tasty).
Not to sound touchy feely "We Are the World"-y but this commonality in recipes and love of chiles redeems my faith in humanity a little or at least brings out a feeling that food can create bridges between people and can allow individuals to self-educate about cultures other than their own. It also lead to the imperialistic Western European drive across the globe but we're gonna just gloss over that. That whole sugar and slavery thing...yeah, that was kind of a catastrophe. However without the Spanish conquest of the Western Hemisphere there wouldn't be nam prik or sambal or zhoug or doro wat (okay there would still be doro wat but it wouldn't be so damned tasty).
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