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I'm not from Seattle, and it shows. Unlike born-and-raised Seattleites, I have a taste for spicy food—jalapeno-studded salsa, fiery pickled peppers, flaming-hot barbecue sauce. I love the shock of a searing tongue, the chills, the hallucinatory glow, that come from a truly fiery meal.

Or I should say: I did. Nearly a decade in Seattle—where "four stars" Thai food is the equivalent of a single star near the (other) border—has dulled my taste buds and taken away my tolerance for the fiery foods I used to adore. Discovering this has been a huge disappointment for me, someone who was once so devoted to spicy food (and disappointed by Seattle's lack of same) that I ordered a stir-fry at Siam on Eastlake with "20 stars."

I discovered my new intolerance for spice the other day, when I ordered four-star roasted duck noodle soup at Broadway's wonderful Rom Mai Thai (AKA Overattentive Thai) a cute neighborhood place whose only drawback is the bizarrely doting, intrusive service.

The soup looked lovely—big chunks of tender duck meat, a hefty pile of slippery, paper-thin rice noodles, a few superfluous green vegetables, and the requisite bean sprouts and Thai basil.

The first bite hit me like a brick in the face. Not just spicy, but nuclear-meltdown hot, the sort of heat that sears your tongue and numbs your palate, making it hard to taste anything else. Although I valiantly (or stubbornly) made my way through the whole bowl (along with several liters of water), it wasn't the experience I remembered (and longed for) from countless Indian, Thai, and Mexican meals in the past. No chills, no shock of pain, no hallucinatory glow. Just pain that grew stronger and more persistent the more I ate.

The experience repeated itself a few days later at Thai Recipe, a strip-mall hole-in-the-wall in Mount Baker that I wrote about in my roundup of restaurants near light rail stations. I ordered the eggplant in black bean sauce, four stars—and same thing. Searing, unpleasant pain that grew more violent with every bite.

What's going on? Spicy foods like chile peppers contain an ingredient called capsacain.  Foods containing capsacain trick your brain into believing your mouth is under attack, causing it to release pain-relieving endorphins, which, in turn, can create a temporary feeling of euphoria. (There's also evidence that spicy foods can aid in the cure of some diseases). Over time, people build up a tolerance to spicy foods—meaning, as with some drugs, that you need more over time to achieve the same feeling. The good news, for me anyway, is that tolerance effect works the other way, too—meaning that you can build up your tolerance to spicy foods gradually, trying increasingly spicy foods over a period of weeks.

A couple of recipes I still love from Jump Up and Kiss Me, a 1996 book of spicy vegetarian recipes by Jennifer Trainer Thompson, after the jump.

FoodNerd brought to you buy Kim Ricketts




Red Beans with Chipotles

Ingredients

One large yellow onion, diced

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Three cloves garlic, minced

Two tomatoes, chopped

Freshly ground black pepper

2 teaspoons salt

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon thyme

2 teaspoons fresh oregano

1 pound kidney or red beans, soaked overnight

2 to 5 chipotle chiles, depending on desired heat

In a large saucepan over medium heat, saute the onion in vegetable oil until tender. Add the garlic and saute another minute. Add the tomatoes, pepper, salt, bay leaf, thyme, and half the oregano. Add the beans and enough water to cover the beans by two inches. Bring to a boil and add the chipotles. Cover, lower heat, and simmer. Remove the chiles once they are softened , about 15 to 20 minutes, and set aside. Once they've cooled, stem and chop half the chipotles and return them to the pot. Simmer for about two hours, or until the beans are tender. Just before serving, add the remaining teaspoon of oregano. Taste, and if more heat is desired, chop and stir in the remaining chipotles.

Stuffed Poblanos with Chipotle-Tomato Sauce

Chipotle-Tomato Sauce

2 tablespoons peanut oil

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

5 cloves garlic, sliced

1 28-ounce can plum tomatoes

2 chipotle chiles, stemmed

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Stuffed poblanos

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

3 cups cooked and cooled white and wild rice blend, made with long-grain white rice

1 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels

1/3 cup currants (I usually leave these out)

1 teaspoon fennel

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup grated Monterey Jack cheese plus additional, for garnish

6 poblano or Anaheim peppers, about 4 to 5 inches long

Sour cream, for garnish

To make the sauce, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and saute until just beginning to brown, about 8 minutes. Add garlic and saute for an additional minute. Add tomatoes and their liquid, chipotles, oregano, thyme, and salt. Simmer partially covered over medium heat for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to break up the tomatoes. Remove from heat and set aside to cool, about 10 minutes. Blend in food processor or blender, in batches if necessary, until well blended, about 30 seconds. The sauce will have some texture and should yield about 3 1/2 cups.

To prepare peppers, dry-toast the pumpkin seeds over medium heat in a small skillet until they begin to pop, about 1 to 2 minutes. In a medium bowl, mix the rice, currants, fennel, oregano, cumin, salt, black pepper, cheese, pumpkin seeds,and 1/2 cup of the sauce. Set aside. Preheat oven to 350.

Spread one cup of the sauce in the bottom of a 9 by 13 inch glass baking dish. Using the tip of a small, sharp knife, split the poblanos lengthwise from end to end, being careful not to cut through to the other side. Gently split open the pepper and remove the seeds and ribs, keeping the stem intact. Repeat for all 6 peppers.

Divide the rice mixture among the peppers, gently close each pepper around the filling, and place in the baking dish. Cover tightly with foil and bake about 45 to 55 minutes, or until the peppers are soft and the filling is steaming hot.

Meanwhile, over a low flame, heat the remaining sauce to pass at the table.

When the peppers are baked, uncover and top each with a few tablespoons of cheese and return to the oven for 5 minutes, uncovered, to melt the cheese. Serve with the sauce and a dollop of sour cream.