Heirloom by Tim Stark

Author:Tim Stark
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780767930062
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2008-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

THE MISUNDERSTOOD HABANERO

IT’S ONE OF THOSE days at the farmers market—a bright October sky, tables piled high with late summer bounty, the sun so tolerable you can’t get enough of it—where people are buzzing around my stand, not buying much, asking too many questions. People always ask too many questions when they see a hundred varieties of chile peppers arrayed before them like this.

“Excuse me, which pepper is the hottest?”

“The one in my hand,” I answer.

“What is that, a chocolate-covered walnut?”

“It’s a hot pepper. A very hot pepper.”

“What kind of hot pepper looks like a chocolate-covered walnut?”

“Chocolate habanero. Or chocolate Scotch bonnet. In Trinidad, they call it seven-pot pepper.” I add the part about seven-pot pepper as a temptation for these two ladies from Port of Spain who were lured to my stand by the familiar wrinkled brown pepper in my hand. But they’re not buying yet. Like most West Indians, they are skeptical about the pungency of my Pennsylvania-grown specimens. “Okay, so maybe this one only fires up five pots,” I say, cracking open the chocolate hab so its distinctive perfume wafts toward the ladies, eliciting the expected smile of recognition.

“I just need something to spice up a tomato sauce,” says a red-haired college girl.

“Throw half of this in your sauce,” I advise, handing over a weightless, papery-skinned Thai chile. “If it’s not hot enough, throw in the other half. Need a bag?”

“A bag? Please. Drop it in with my apples.”

“That’ll be fifteen cents.”

She gives me a quarter and says, “Keep the change.”

“Which one is the hottest?”

“This one. Chocolate habanero.”

“Are those real peppers? They look plastic.”

“That’s because they’re fresh. Picked yesterday.”

“Picked yesterday? They lose their heat if you let them sit around, right?”

“Um…no.”

“That’s what I heard. They get milder with age…don’t they?” The man who says this has a beard and he’s wearing a shabby tweed coat. He’s holding a branch of yellow Thai chiles in one hand, a branch of red Thai chiles in the other. A warning flag goes up in the back of my brain: It’s him. By him, I mean the philosopher guy, the one who always ties me up in metaphysical knots over some hitherto unexamined property of chile peppers. While my chiles have developed a cult following, and I can only deem myself grateful for, say, the woman who puts chiles in her socks to keep her feet warm (if anyone, I suppose, she would know whether the heat diminishes over time) or the sorceress who uses them to ward off evil spirits, the last thing I want to do just now is engage in a lengthy debate with this modern-day Socrates over the staying power of my chiles.

All the same, I can’t resist falling into his trap: “If anything,” I reply firmly, “it should be the other way around. The capsaicin gets more concentrated when the chile dries out. Pound for pound, the chile gets hotter.”

“Hmm. Not what I’ve been told. You know, I don’t like my chiles too hot. Which of these is milder?” He holds up the yellow and red Thai chile branches.

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