Hotter Than You

By: Hazidi Abdul Hamid

I love hot food. When I was little I thought that my hot food must be the hottest in the world. When I was in primary school, my Dad introduced me to Japanese food and I immediately fell in love with wasabi but this was a different kind of heat. It was a piquantness that stung me in a wholly different place in my eating machine. I could gardly speak not breathe but I was happy. Then, I got to taste authentic Thai Tomyam. As I sat there watery eyed and fire in my mouth, I noticed that there is pleasure beyond the heat. Still, I held on to the fantasy that my hot food was hotter than the others.

The joy in my mouth did not come from solely from the piquantness. The beauty of Tomyam and Masak Lemak Cili Api came from the different symphonies of tastes that they play. The heat was a significant voice but it did not sing a solo acapella. The fugue sang of different emotions.

As a student, I met a bonafide Mexican who introduced me to authentic Mexican culibary experiences. I learnt that they indeed take the heat to greater levels but again the music they play were different: louder but mainly just different. The Habanero burns with greater intensity than the cili burung but it lacks that delightful fruitiness of the cili padi. By then, I no longer believed that my hot food was the hottest in the world.  

When I was young, like many Malaysians, I thought some Malaysian food was the hottest in the world but I soon learnt that it was not. More importantly, I learnt that it’s not about the heat. I learnt this when I discovered a certain chili sauce. I don’t remember its full name but it had the phrase "Singapore Special" on the label. It was very hot but it was ONLY hot, there was almost no other discernible taste which made it boring on its own but it also made it useful for mixing to make sauces. I think my university mates would remember this.

Today, there are people in the West who call themselves Chili-heads who cultivate extremely hot chilies and consume them like a sport almost. Like in many areas, they are obsessed with the heat. The hotter, the better. The piquant-ness turns to pain and that is what they seek. As usual, these Westerners miss the point. Yes, a chili may be the hottest in the world but what good is being the hottest if it does not taste good?

The heat is not the objective of consuming chilies, it is only one of many tastes that go together to produce the joyous taste if our food: like notes in a symphony. The key is balance. Asian food uses different balances to create beauty. The beauty brings joy. If you only achieve pain then you have created a cacophony, not a symphony.

Today, I see my fellow Malaysians take pride in the wrong things: they create excessively ugly sounds. They parade their cacophonies fooling themselves that these are symphonies. Among other things, our taste buds have become 'tone' deaf.  Sadly, it is not just our taste buds and our ears that have gone partially deaf.