Spicy Food Workout

“You take out your aggression in the kitchen” Kasma, our Thai cooking instructor yelled at the group of would-be chefs. “Making curry”, she shouted, over the pounding of the heavy stone mortar and pestle, “is very therapeutic!” Pound, pound, thwack thwack. What was a pile of shallots, garlic, ginger, and chilis was soon pulverized into a fragrant, thick paste.

True, this nice suburban Oakland home where we took some courses in Thai cooking turned into a clanging din of pounding. Lots of smashing and pounding, it turns out, goes on in Thai cooking. It’s a socially acceptable way of getting out a little aggressive, historically female, tension. But with more and more men in the kitchen, the dynamics are shifting. Punching a hole in the wall while wearing a spaghetti-stained wife beater is a bit old-school. But smashing a clove of garlic with the flat end of a huge Chinese meat cleaver can feel just as satisfying, minus the broken hand.

Not only that, but the physical sensation of doing an activity releases a little adrenaline as well. OK, it’s not BASE jumping or alligator wrestling, but if we’re stuck as a species eating three times a day, and preparing three times as well, wasn’t this nature’s way of rewarding us for these tasks?

So I get the physical aspect of cooking, but what about the spicy level? It’s not natural – kids hate spicy things unless trained at any early level. Jaclyn remembers kids leaving restaurants in Oaxaca crying after the parents (probably the papá) forced them to eat that habanero chimichanga. We found the answer soon enough. Our cat, Dalton, eats anything we prepare on the kitchen counter – Gruyère cheese, crackers, yogurt, soy sauce, hummus, raw meat, you name it – this cat’s a vacuum cleaner. Everything except our spicy Thai food. He steer clears of that stuff – even though it has his favorite seafood in it, like Tom Yum shrimp soup.

Maybe humans started eating spicy foods because it deterred other animals and critters from helping themselves to the hard-earned calories? Or perhaps the chilis (and before Christopher Columbus, peppercorns) kept bacteria away from food in a hot and humid environment like SE Asia and India? That’s an interesting thought as well while we train our new kid to enjoy that hot n’ spicy soup. Because we can deal with a lot of challenges that new parents face, but bland food is not one of them. We’ll start with 500 Scoville Heat Units and work ourselves up the heat ladder. I just hope toddler doesn’t run out of our favorite taqueria, crying from mouth-on-fire, cause that’s just plain embarrassing.