Category Archives: Miscellaneous

I like big bhuts and I cannot lie

BhutJolokia09_Asit

Bhut jolokias
Photo: A.K. Ghosh – Wikimedia Commons
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Spice and heat are two glorious facts of South Indian cooking. It is a good time for those us who like our food hot, hotter, and just right. And I don’t mean temperature. The habanero is readily available in Los Angeles and delivers the goods – an honest, intense burn with little subtlety. Thai chilies aren’t quite as potent but make up for it with more complex flavors. The new crop of jolokias from northeastern India pack a mightier punch than the habanero yet bring much more to the table. Subtlety and peppers aren’t usually uttered together yet it is possible to tell that there is something draping the experience just before the fire hits. I managed to grow a few one lucky summer in 2011 and have been unable to do it since. I never had to mix a lot into a dish to make it memorable.

Lauren Collins’s delightful article in the New Yorker profiles growers whose quest for the hottest chile has become a contact sport. Mary Roach reports on a jolokia eating competition in Assam for Smithsonian Magazine.

Here’s to hoping that bhuts and nagas are soon readily available in supermarkets.

Turning off the roar in the head – Silent Stay

It is of course ironic to post a link to an article about disconnecting from the Internet grid. Nevertheless, Avital Andrews’s Bring on the Solitude article in the LA Times about Silent Stay is worth a look. This resort in Vacaville, CA offers a chance to experience peace and quiet, subtly enforced by policy. It sounds very tempting although Andrews confesses that it didn’t completely take with her.

The retreat’s website is at http://www.silentstay.com/index.html

Sounds similar to the San Francisco Zen Center’s Tassjara Mountain Center

Old Time Radio fans may recall the Mr. Costello, Hero episode of the terrific X Minus One series of the 1950s. Theodore Sturgeon’s not-so-subtle slam at McCarthyism centers around a society where forbidding solitude became a means of social control.

Addendum: In her article, Andrews writes “That’s when I noticed that the silence wasn’t really silent. When you banish the sound of traffic, the phone, the alarm clock, the laptop and the TV, what’s left isn’t soundlessness. ” The LA Phil will be performing Cage’s 4’33” at its 2013 Gala Opening.