Text | Figure grasp the total
Pepper is a crop that was introduced to China for 400 years, and it was eaten for 300 years...
At first, I didn't eat it, but I kept it as an ornamental plant.
Later, eating, is to give full play to its flavoring characteristics, it can also be said that it is because of "poor", spicy instead of salt.
The earliest historical record of eating spicy provinces in China is Guizhou, where the local mountainous, poor climatic conditions, poor living conditions, lack of oil and salt, so the Miao people try to use peppers instead of salt to accompany the meal - until now, guizhou Qiandongnan Taijiang area is still eating a local called "slag spicy" with chili peppers and salt and glutinous rice blended into the "chili noodles", accurately conveying the attitude of the pepper when it was first introduced into the dish.
Why is spicy food attractive? And it seems that I miss it for a while without eating?
This slight addiction is actually the tingling and burning sensation caused by the pungent substances contained in chili peppers stimulating the mouth and digestive system. "Spicy", rather than saying that it is a sense of taste, it is better to recognize that it belongs to the essence of pain, stimulated by spicy, people will secrete endorphins to balance pain, and what follows is the kind of addiction "pleasure" that makes people "addicted".
It's like watching a horror movie, knowing that you are afraid, but you still want to watch it, and eating spicy is the same, knowing that spicy (the pain of "chrysanthemums are broken, full of wounds"), but you still want to eat.
And this eating, but also out of control, from 1993 to 2018 in the period of time domestic pepper production soared more than 10 times, the data is leveraged.
A small pepper, from the basic plant attributes to one of the elements with specific social attributes is also caught off guard, in addition to meeting the needs of individual tastes, like to eat spicy, or can eat a certain degree of spicy, there are also as psychology said "empathy response" "secret symbol", eat spicy together, addicted together, together pain and happiness!
Guinness World Record holder in the chili world
When Columbus discovered in the New World that natives were chewing peppers, he probably didn't think it was one of the oldest crops grown by humans on Earth.
Archaeologists estimate that chili peppers have been cultivated by humans since 7000 BC, the Maya have begun to eat chili peppers in 5000 BC, and as the last imported to China but later to become the most widely used condiment of imported products, the earliest record of chili peppers in China is recognized as the Ming Dynasty Gao Lian's 1591 "Zunsheng Eight Notes" narrated: "Peppers are clustered with flowers, the fruit is like a bald pen head, the taste is spicy red, and it is very impressive." ”
Chili pepper is called pepper, bald pen head this description is also quite image, here inserted a cold knowledge, the name with the word "fan" in the foreign crops such as tomatoes, sweet potatoes, guava, pepper, is from the sea, through the maritime Silk Road to China; and the name with "pepper" words such as pepper, carrot, beans (broad beans), walnuts, coriander (coriander), then through the land Silk Road to China.
As a pepper pepper, it first landed from Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangsu and Zhejiang, but it was not fully utilized in these places at the first time, but it was from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the southwest region to prosper and "flood" the spark, and by the Qing Jiaqing period, Sichuan, Xiang, Qian, Gan and other provinces have become "planted as vegetables, no pepper mustard and no mustard, soup is more numerous, choose its extremely spicy, rice per dish, must not be spicy" place.
American Wilbur Scoville in 1912 to mash out a unit of spiciness, named after their own name, called "Scottville Spiciness Unit", referred to as SHU (Scoville Heat Unit), popular understanding is to dilute a Scowell unit of chili pepper with sugar water dilution a certain multiple, so that the tip of the tongue does not feel the spicy taste - the higher the multiple, the more spicy.
Scowell's spiciness unit, pictured from @ Knowledge of The Upcoming Duck
In New Zealand in the southern hemisphere, there is a chili sauce that is said to be made of peppers grown by Mexican immigrants, and mexicans are so daring to do it, even if they immigrate to New Zealand, they have not forgotten their roots, and for this small bottle of chili sauce, he gave three Guinness World Records chili peppers, "Naga Viper" (Naga Viper) The Slywell spiciness unit is 1.382 million, "Trinidad Scorpion Butch" (Trinidad Scorpion Butch T) is 1.464 million Scowell spiciness units, native to a remote mountainous area of India "ghost pepper" (Bhuts Jolokia), is the most subtle of the three, Scowell spiciness units are also more than 1 million, it is said that the Indian army is studying how to apply ghost peppers to the development of grenades...
These three kinds of peppers have been the Guinness World Records holder in the pepper industry, fortunately, this benevolent brother has not yet used the "Carolina Death" with a spiciness unit of up to 2.2 million in Scottville, you know, "Carolina Death" is further up is the tear gas level spicy, yes, you guessed it, female anti-wolf spray also has pepper ingredients, commonly known as "pepper pure extract".
Cantonese people don't eat spicy?
Are you afraid that there is no place called Nanxiong?
In the early years, the media released a "China Urban Spicy Food Report", from the geographical distribution point of view, the top five provinces and cities and people's conventional cognition of the "spicy capital" has nothing to do, in addition to Beijing with a 24.4% advantage to the top, The Great Guangdong with 19.1% of the ranking of the "runner-up", those who say "Guangdong people eat everything" and "Guangdong people do not eat spicy", please reflect on yourself!
Geographical distribution map of China's spicy food population, pictured from NetEase Upstream Flow
Regarding the proposition of "Guangdong people do not eat spicy", it is really a "pseudo-proposition", Guangdong people do not eat spicy, but the saying that is circulating is that Cantonese cuisine pays attention to the original taste, medicine and food are homologous, and spicy seasoning is contrary to the concept of traditional health diet, so it forms a "mindset", which has evolved into "Guangdong people do not eat spicy". What about the facts?
Shunde cuisine, out of The Jun'an steamed pig of Jun'an, there is a chili cake, ginger, garlic, tempeh, finger pepper plus soy sauce, salt, sugar and other flavors mashed and mixed well to make small cakes, very commonly used condiments.
Hakka in Meizhou and Heyuan areas, purple and golden pepper sauce is standard, without it, Hakka stuffed tofu seems to have less soul.
A bibimbap hot sauce from Zengcheng "rushed into the clouds", Cantonese people are not strangers at all, used to send dry fried beef river, perfect match.
In Lianzhou, Qingyuan, Guangdong, farmers dry peppers
Maoming, Guangdong Province, eat a Sanhua plum to dip in chili water.
Shaoguan, northern Guangdong, each family has a "secret recipe" for making garlic pepper sauce, but it is really not a "secret recipe", and the production method is particularly simple, that is, it means that the heavenly pepper plus single-headed garlic plus ginger, each chopped and chopped into a mushroom, add a little salt, conditionally covered with olive oil, no olive oil with general cooking oil is also OK, put in the refrigerator for a week, you can take out a big meal, each will do, not unusual. The locally produced chili sauce "old friend", from slightly spicy to spicy to spicy king, layer by layer is clearly marked, the grade is clear, whether you can eat it, all depends on the individual.
Finally, if you say that "Guangdong people don't eat spicy", are you afraid that you have forgotten Nanxiong, which belongs to the county-level city of Shaoguan and is directly managed by finance? Eating spicy index can be called Guangdong "ceiling", even if put in front of the major spicy provinces also do not lose the battle, this three provinces in the corner of the land, the collection of Guangdong, Hunan, Gan spicy flavor of the essence, "the head of the five ridges" is not a wave of false name, the famous sour shoot duck, spicy you call, spicy to your jump, but can not suppress eating a bite to think of two bites ...
The cross-regional flow of personnel opens up the second pulse of the spicy world
From a psychological point of view, eating spicy behavior can be attributed to a kind of "benign self-abuse", when people eat peppers and stimulate the senses through the spicy taste, people's instincts will suggest that they are in "danger", but at the same time rational thinking lets themselves know that "I am safe", this "contrast cuteness" is also one of the root causes of people's spicy and addictive, and also greatly improves the return rate of pepper customers.
Taking Guangdong as an example, in recent years, the Xiang Army in the spicy army has sprung up, attacking the city with the number of advantageous stores, Xiao Yao, secretary general of the Guangdong Hunan Cuisine Association, said in an interview that from 2000 to 2018, Hunan cuisine in Guangzhou and even the whole country belongs to a period of rapid development, even after the catering industry in the second half of 2019 generally entered a relatively downturn, the number of Stores of Hunan Cuisine is still the first in the country, but because the Number of Xiang Cuisine Restaurants is more than one or two hundred square meters of small shops with an operating area, so although the number of restaurants has won the championship, The overall scale of operation still ranks second in the country, which belongs to the distinct development trend of "large number and small scale".
By the end of 2021, according to incomplete statistics, there are about 6,000 Hunan cuisine stores in Guangzhou, about 5,000 in Shenzhen, and about 4,000 in Dongguan, and the total number of Hunan restaurants in Guangdong Province has been roughly estimated to be 100,000.
From a spicy "chain of contempt", Guizhou, which first tried to eat peppers, is basically at the relative bottom end, and the northwest also eats spicy, but that kind of spiciness is actually not spicy, even Quzhou, the only small city in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, that "three heads and one palm" is also very skilled.
Dried chili peppers, lard residue and fried peanut rice composed of Guizhou Bijie "fried three dings"
When the people of Guizhou said that they loved to eat spicy, the Sichuan people were the first to express their disobedience; when the spicy Sichuan came on, the Hunan people laughed; when the Hunan people claimed that they were eating spicy bars, the Jiangxi people laughed but did not say anything...
And basically to Jiangxi people here, eating spicy "contempt chain" can end, Jiangxi is the invisible boss of eating spicy, not saying a word, silent, spicy you a seven tricks of smoke, that kind of all-round around the Liang three days lingering spicy impact, has struck how many underestimated Jiangxi people eat spicy ability of the humble.
In recent years Chinese the trend of eating spicy has become more and more intense, but also with the large cross-regional flow of population is inseparable from the relationship, if the sudden rise of Hunan cuisine is in recent years, then with the trend of "thousands of troops and horses" "swept" all over the field of Sichuan cuisine, is the long history of mobile spicy platter, in the early years even inaccessible Tibetan areas, but anyone who sees a small restaurant open for business, do not ask, 80% is opened by Sichuan people.
Fish-headed beauty frog
Coupled with the "benign self-masochism" and "mild addiction" characteristics of spicy eating, it can quickly capture the stimulation of the senses of the taste buds, and also play a role in alleviating stress and anxiety to a certain extent, becoming a disguised way to help urban people release stress, and thus becoming more popular.
But in essence, eating spicy, like other heavy salt and heavy oil and other heavy tastes, still carries the taste label derived from barrenness, although not absolute, at least it is not bad, compared to the pursuit of the original taste of the ingredients to eat fresh, heavy taste diet, whether it is time cost or spiritual cost, are not the same.