hotter curries

[regulators]

if i  eat a madras curry and can take the spicy taste could it be possible to train my taste buds to take a vindaloo and then even hotter phall or can you never get used to it

[j2buttonsw]

I think you can train yourself to take hotter foods. I used to have to drink milk with a madras and often wished for a curry that was still as flavoursome but slightly milder, but now I can handle them OK. I have never tried vindaloo though and phall is mentalism. Having said that, it depends on the chef as to how hot they really are. As an aside, a friend of mine can eat whole raw chillis (much to the amusement of the curry house owner) which he said he trained himself to do (not to show off, he genuinely likes very hot food).

[Richard Head]

I think I know your friend. Isn't he the one with the arse like a Japanese flag?

[j2buttonsw]

LOL!

[New Forester]

As you eat more hot food, the nerve-endings which give the hot sensation become damaged and you do actually taste less "heat".

 

I don't think the damage is permanent -- certainly I find my tolerance declines when I haven't had chilli for a bit.  Other tastes should not be affected -- I think the chilli only gets those nerve endings which are sensitive to heat.

 

The problem comes when the chilli gets somewhere which still has nerve endings.  I was once chopping green chillies while I had a bad cold.  I carelessly stopped for a minute to blow my red and sore nose, and found the experience rather like holding a flame under my hooter for ten minutes or so.  More sensitive parts can be worse -- I imagine that curry chefs get in the habit of washing their hands before visiting the little boy's room, as well as after.

 

I've found that certain mildish chillies are very much hotter if eaten with fresh fruit such as tomatoes.  I suspect that these chillies are missing a heat-releasing enzyme, and a similar enzyme happens to occur in the tomatoes.  It leads to the odd illusion that the tomato you ate five minutes later was the extremely hot thing.

 

There are some mushrooms which are at least as hot as chilli, but with a weird time-lag of up to a minute (this is as far as my strange mushroom experiences go though...).

[madham]

In authentic curries you will find that Madras is hotter than Vindaloo, so you should be able to eat them, you should have fresh parsley at hand to take away the sting. I myself think I have become immune to hot food, well if you exclude a Phall i've yet to try one of those!!!!

[LordyGeordie]

actually if you're talking about 'authentic curries', then there's no such thing as a vindaloo. apparently it was made up for the western market, not sure whether madras is authentic or not. Personally, i like a hot curry and managed to train my taste buds to eat phal, what i have not been able to train is the other end, if you get my drift. i also have made the mistake of not washing my hands before going to the loo after having chopped a chilli - very painful