Eating spicy food has been customary in many eastern cultures for many centuries. Since humans discovered spices we have always experimented with various flavors and tastes to flavor our foods. Grinding barks from trees and crushing the leaves and seed of a bush was part of the experimenting process. How else could we as people know how something tastes unless we put it in our mouth and tasted it? Just as a young toddler or child putting things in their mouth for curiosity we as adults to the same with curiosity. So why then did we accept or like the taste of something burning our tongues?!
The answer is because it simply made food taste better. The complexity of food favors come from contrast. We could never appreciate cool milk or yogurt without having our mouth burn with fiery pepper the same way we could not fully enjoy the sweetness of a savory vegetable without the contrast of heat.
Today we know that spicy food actually provides some very good benefits. For one it naturally speeds up our metabolism which aids in the digestion of food effectively and efficiently. Eating spicy foods also help in breathing more easily while experiencing a cold and stuffed up nose.
Before I take you on this journey I want to explain how I developed my taste for the culinary arts. It started back in my mothers' kitchen. My mother always taught me to be adventurous with food. Having an Asian, Indonesian background I was always eating rice as a staple and various vegetables and meats local to our coastal home. My mother was always intrigued by foreign foods and always told me "even though we are not rich and unable to travel we can certainly get a taste of other foreign foods". She was certainly right as she would prepare Italian, Indian and other foods from other faraway lands. Up until my university years I already had the taste buds for foreign foods.
Gerry Barja
My school years were spent at Jakarta State University. I had little money to spend but would always try to eat American burgers and often sought western dishes. Hamburger and french fries was my starting point for western food. I always thought the western food was a little bland for my taste but loved the simpleness to the combinations of flavor. I typically found that contrast and relations between tastes are what made western food appetizing. Mixing sour and sweet, salty and hot, sweet and hot/sour etc. Westerners achieve this with basic pepper, table salt as appose to fish sauce, ketchup substitutes for sweet and sour etc.
Gerry often like traveling to remote unpopular areas in Asia and exploring food adventures.
