u/LastElevator1664

Ever had a dish that completely rearranged your senses?

In Chapter 6 of my Chile and Spice journey, I’m breaking down the beautiful, volatile extremes of Yucatán cuisine, from the gridlocked streets of CDMX and a legendary, smoke-choked taco counter called El Turix.

Discover the culinary science of surviving the tropical heat:

The Fire: How to negotiate with a 200,000 SHU habanero using fat and chemistry.

The Trench: The ancient Mayan secrets of cooking underground in a limestone píib.

The Sweetness: The rare, sacred jungle honey of the stingless Melipona bee.

Mexico doesn't do middle ground. It forces you to endure the blistering fire to unlock the unexpected sweetness.

I started a Chile and Spice series on my Substack about the evolution and migration of chiles from South American and it's journey across the world. I am concluding Volume I with a deep dive into the chilis of Mexico.

I worked as a chef in Mexico for a couple years, and I my Mexican chefs has taught me so much about their food culture. In the Mexican portion of my writing series, we start with mole (the holy grail of pre-Spanish Mexican gastronomy) and uncover the seven different regional cooking of Mexico and the chiles that are featured in that food culture.

Follow along and let me know about your favorite Mexican chile or salsas.

Hey everyone,

As a Thai and Lao chef, chili isn't just an ingredient for me; it’s the lens through which I seek out and understand food. That obsession deepened even further when I lived and worked in Mexico, standing at the very geographic birthplace of how humans interact with domesticated capsicum.

Living between these culinary worlds made me realize something mind-blowing about the global migration of the chili pepper.

When Spanish and Portuguese explorers first encountered chilis in the Americas, they didn't really embrace it in their own domestic kitchens. To them, it was a novelty, or a cheap substitute for black pepper. But like birds scattering seeds across the wind, these European trade ships carried the chili across the globe.

They dropped it off on the coasts of West Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. And that is where the magic happened.

The Europeans who carried it didn't care for it, but the moment it touched the soils of Thailand, India, Kenya, or Jamaica, it became completely indispensable. These cultures took a foreign botanical and instantly wove it into the bedrock of their culinary identities. You literally cannot imagine a Thai curry, a Goan vindaloo, or a Jamaican jerk without it today.

Because of my background, I’ve decided to launch a deep-dive research project mapping this exact journey. I am tracing the botanical, historical, and culinary origins of how different global cultures took this pain-and-pleasure plant and built their lives around it.

I’m putting together a massive chapter-by-chapter series exploring this global trade and culinary evolution. If you want to follow along with the maps, historical recipes, and regional breakdowns, I’ll drop a link to the write-ups below! I'd love to hear your thoughts on how your own culture utilizes the chili.