April 13, 2023 • 27 mins
Did you know most chiles found around the world originated in Mexico? On this episode, Eva and Maite explore the vast history of chiles and even do a taste test along the way! Plus, friend of the show Ivan Vasquez, owner of Madre Restaurants in Los Angeles, returns to share his thoughts on how important chiles are in Oaxacan cuisine and as part of his culture as a whole.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
My name is Eva Longoria and I am and welcome
to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past
and present through food. On every episode, we'll talk about
the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages.
So make yourself at home, even Rachel, can you hear
(00:28):
my hips? I know chips, some chips, we have some salsas.
I have a little I have a little tikilita here
to do you see my little shatkas. It's a chingana.
I thought i'd serve just to to to tout your
(00:49):
successive flaming heart. Thank you. Speaking of g speaking of cheam,
I'm so excited. I don't know if I anything makes
me happier than than chips and salza. It is one
of the best things in the world. So of course
we had to do an episode on Chile's and salsas,
on cheless and salsas, chiles and salas and mole but
(01:14):
a few things are better than chips in salsa. I
totally agree. And we have a couple of salzas in
front of us that I thought, yeah, we should taste. Yes,
you made these, so I made I thought, because there
are so many different varieties so many different types of
salsas with raw chile cooked dry chile. So I have
(01:36):
two salzas. The green salza is ra serrano with tomato
celantro is just raw and just is that the green one?
It's the green one. It's just raw. It's just the
raw ingredients, just put in the blender and should we
taste it? Yeah? Now is your philosophy a dipping salza
(01:57):
for chips and salsa different than salsa for inchiladas or tackles.
It depends. This green salza I would put on like
a really charred skirt steak. Oh my god, that's hot,
did you And like, I like it really spicy. I
(02:22):
love it too. This is my This is a perfect level.
I think it's really good. I mean, if I were
making anchilada susas, I would probably cook the cook the sauce,
you know, like roast dry roast the serrano and the onion.
This was just all raw. But I love a really nice,
raw fresh saltsa that has a little kick to it. No,
but this is also what you're saying, which is like
(02:43):
a fresh susa which you can taste it's not cooked.
Is great for a restaurant style. A really fresh raw salsa.
And when you when you roast everything like I do
for my salsas, it has a different it's like super complex.
It has a different, different profile. But this one's great.
And also the color is so vibrant. It's like such
(03:03):
a beautiful bright green color. When you cook it, it's
it loses that oo a little bit. But I have
a beautiful Michael Mato recipe online on my on my
Instagram if anybody wants to go get it, and I
show the difference between when I blend it and then
I cook it, and it's like almost brown green once
(03:24):
it's cooked, and the bright green is so pretty. But
you can see whenever you people go, how do you
know when it's done. I'm like, you'll see it changes color. Yeah, okay,
what's the next one? And the next one is a
red sid sack And this is this one's pretty spicy.
This is dried chile as. I use dried arbol and wahiyo,
oh my god. I roasted those with a little bit
(03:45):
of garlic and then put those in the blender and
cooked it with a little bit of oil. I can
see the olive oil. Yeah, oh that has a kick.
So the difference between Chile for me and Serrano, it's
like cheeta. The aim is like a slap in the face.
It like slaps your mouth. It's like a little more
aggressive than the said animal. I'm not saying it's hotter,
(04:08):
it's like it's different. It's a little more like it
punches you in a different way. I feel like this.
I feel it. It's funny because when I first made
it it was a lot spicier, and right now it's
like a slow burn. I feel it in the back
of my throat, whereas the other one I feel it
more in my tongue. Yeah, it's hot, it's really hot,
but you can taste it. It's more. It's super smoky.
(04:29):
I mean, just with the dried chilas on the skillet.
And this is really nice. Um. This is also great
with chips. I like this sauce. This is great with
and chiladas if you want to really hot and chilada.
But um, just with chips. If this is warm, I'd
like it a lot because it's cloth. It's nice to
have a litttle warmth. But Suld done this at the
(04:51):
end of the podcast. Mexico has a huge history of
chiless no huge, huge, huge cheese. History of Chiles and
Mexico has more chi less than any other country, but
all chi less made their way to the rest of
(05:14):
the world from Mexico. Now, what about the Asian Chiless
They were all originally from Mexico, all of them, even
if its the Thai Chile, the Thai Chile came from
a Mexican Chile. Wow, I didn't know that. Even like
Paprika and Hungary, or the bad On peppers in Spain,
(05:35):
or the Thai Chiles that are that are super spicy,
everything was from Mexico and with colonization, made their way
to different parts of the world. I did not know that.
I did not know that. So did did Chile have
a goddess like it? Was it like the corn god?
Was it worshiped just like they? Did it have a
god in Prehispanic Mexico? It did. There was a goddess.
(05:58):
And let me see if I could pronounce your name.
The goddess. Her name was Patawaki see watt Itchi sintly.
She was also known as senor So, the Senora of
the Little Red Chile. She was the sister of kla Look,
the god of Rain, and Chico the goddess of agriculture.
(06:21):
Um so she's the sister of rain and agriculture, which,
just in and of itself, tells us that this was
an important goddess. And then when you when they would
fast for religious reasons, fasting entailed abstaining from Chile and salt.
I love that, Like, that's why I should give up
for land. Is like Chile instead of wine, Chile instead
(06:46):
of wine. Okay, I'm gonna give up Chile because in
pre Hispanic Mexico that's what you did when you fasted,
abstain from Chile, which is so interesting because that was penance.
Goes to show how important it was not having salt
in your diet. I mean, not having salt in the
diet is pretty horrible, but abstaining from that was pettis.
(07:08):
So it shows you just how important it was in
the Prehistanic diet, and it's still so important in the
Mexican diet. Well, I knew Chile was from Mexico, like
I knew Chile was from Mexico, but I always thought
Asia had their own set of Chiles. So that's very interesting.
But I do know Mexico is the world's main exporter
of Chiles with over one million tons exporting annually, and
(07:31):
Mexico has the most variety of chiless. That's not surprising exactly,
but it's what it's so interesting to me. It's like, yes,
you know, Asia has different kinds of Chiles, and they
are different than the kinds that Mexico has, but that's
just because you know, they've they've been cultivated and they've
created their own chi list based on whether they want
something a little more spicy or a little bit sweeter.
(07:51):
But the original Chiles made their way their post conquest
with us. Because this spicy talk is just getting started
more after the break. The original birthplace of chiless is
(08:19):
actually Bolivia, not Mexico, but Bolivia, and eventually they were
nobody really knows how, but probably by birds exactly. They
made their way to Mexico, but Mexico. They've been domesticated
in Mexico for about eight thousand years. You know, so
two las are Mexican. I think you can say, I
think you've probably covered this in one of your art
(08:41):
byte classes of seeing the Chile in art like when
it was depicted, or even like with archaeologists, But it
feels like historically we've dismissed chiles from the diet because
they don't really have calories. They're not a protein, They're
not really a fruit or vegetable that provides any many
substance of value to your body. Did you find that
(09:05):
an art that it was left out longer than it
should have been or that's a good question. I never
really thought about that. I mean, I know that there
are these really interesting eighteenth century paintings, the Casta paintings
that really depict the different casts of society that were
super popular in Mexico during this time. The basically racial
profiling is what those paintings are, and the lower the
(09:27):
classes that are depicted in the paintings. Sometimes you actually
see chiles and other native foods in those paintings. So
what makes it chili spicy? Like physically, what makes it
spicy the seeds. So actually there's something in the chiles
called capsation, and this is a chemical. It's an alkaloid,
you know, when you open up a chili. And this
(09:47):
is something that when I was reading about this, and
I never really put two and two together. Really, I
never really thought about it. When you cut it chile open,
because the chila is a fruit it's actually a berry,
but when you cut it, chile opens, it's hollow inside.
It doesn't have any pulp. But you see it doesn't
have meat. Yeah, it doesn't have meat. But you see
those little membranides, those a little white membrandes that attached
those membranides are what have the keptation. And the keptation
(10:11):
is the chemical. It's an alkaloid, and it doesn't have
any color, it doesn't have any odor, but this is
what gives the chile its heat and its taste, and
that chemical stimulates the body in the tongue or the
skin that normally only feels pain exactly exactly, and this
(10:31):
is what it's I find so interesting. Like the first
bite of the chile effects the tongue and the brain
is telling you, oh my god, my tongue hurts, and
by doing that, it releases endorphins, which are of course,
you know, the endorphins are good. May it feel good?
They give the FILLI body with adrenaline, and so that
acts as a natural pain killer. So your brain is
(10:53):
telling you, oh my god, this hurts, but it also
it feels good. So that's why you can't stop eating
the chiles. You're burning your mouth is water. That's why
I can't stop. That's why we can't stop eating flaming
hot cheetos because it's so good, but it burns so bad,
it hurts so bad, but you can't get enough. Yeah,
when you rank the hotness of a chili, is that
technically how much of that compound it has exactly? And
(11:17):
even you know the impre colonial Mexico, the Aztecs used
to have different grades of chiles from spicy or not spicy.
But now we have this scale called the Scoville scale,
and this tells you sort of the spiciness of the chile.
Oh my god, what is the Scoville heat unit. This
(11:40):
is the method, a scientific method that rates the strength
of peppers, and it was devised in nineteen twelve by
an American pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville, sort of genius. The
way that he did this, so he takes the chiless,
the concentrated chiless, dilutes them in water and sugar, and
the number of times needed to loot the solution until
(12:01):
there's no trace of flavor indicates the degree of heat.
The bell pepper is zero. The avanos that are the
spiciest ones from Mexico land somewhere between one hundred to
three hundred and fifty thousand, and this Carolina Reaper that
I've never tasted is two point two million on this scale. Wow.
So it's the hottest chili in the world. It's the
(12:23):
hottest chili in the world. Where does the word chile
or pepper come from. Is there a native word for it? Yes,
for Chili, there's a native word for chiless. So Chile
comes from the now, while chili, right, So this is
sort of a direct, you know, obvious, you know connection.
But the word pepper comes from Columbus. Christopher Columbus when
(12:44):
he landed in the Caribbean encountered chiless on his first voyage,
and he called them peppers of the Indies. You know.
He was looking for a trade route for peppers and
they found these cheerless so he called them peppers, even
though they're not peppers. They're not but pchanically related to
pepper corns. But this is where the word pepper comes from.
(13:05):
So we have pepper, we have the word chile comes
from the now Chili, and then in South America, like
in Peru and also in the Caribbean, they called chiles
ahis and this is from a Taino word that they
used to call the pepper's ashi um in Santo l Amingo.
And this is where the word ahi comes from. So
(13:27):
basically those are the three. Where does the word bca
come from? That I'm but I pikas means it. If
something becas, it means it. But what I know, vica,
But Gina's were also used for many things. It wasn't
just to be eaten or seasoning of food. It was
(13:49):
used as a weapon as well. Didn't the Aztecs burn
it to create barriers for enemies and stuff like that. Yeah,
they were use it basically as chemical warfare, like a
few bacon. And there's an interesting the codex called the
Codex Mendoza, and you see they would have they would
they would punish misbehaving children by seating them in front
(14:09):
of burning cheeless. Oh my god, that seems very extreme.
It seems horrible. Burning cheeless was also a very important
part of ceremonies, which you still see in this day
in certain ceremonies. And also this is something that's done
to keep you know, to get rid of the maldojo,
to get rid of the evil eye. Yeah. Well, and
and Gina also has some health benefits, right for sure.
(14:32):
It has you know, high vitamin C, it has vitamin B, keroteen,
it has a bunch of antioxidants. When Cortez came and
some of the first things he sent back to the
(14:54):
to the Old World and to specifically the Queen of
Spain was chocolate, it the tomato, and chile. And she
loved the chocolate, and she loved the tomato. And when
she tasted the chile, Chilo, yeah, sent chilo. She she
got bit by the by the pepper, says like she
(15:16):
was like, no, not not having this. Well, they were
growing the chiles in monasteries, so in Spain um they
were growing them and monitors because the plant is so pretty.
What was the European reaction to Chile's because they were
cheap and easy to grow. When Chile's did make their
way in, you know, to Europe, they sort of spread right,
(15:36):
and it was grown as a beautiful, you know plant.
But the lower classes started using it the same way
as black pepper. And this is sort of fifteen hundreds,
the beginning of the Renaissance, and for so many years
during the Middle Ages, the very wealthy tables used to
use a lot of heavy spices, particularly black pepper, but
also things like cinnamon and cuman like, really very lots
(15:59):
of ices. But once we get Chiles and the lower
classes could add some of that to their foods, than
they're really wealthy didn't want it anymore, right, So it
was no longer eating spices, was no longer a status symbol.
But there was a lot of you know, like you said,
you know, the queen didn't want the Chiles. But there's
(16:22):
this English gardener and writer named John Evelyn, and he
was writing to the Earl of Sandwich, who was ambassador
to the Court of Spain in the seventeenth century, and
he talks about the beauty of their fruit. He compared
it to polished coral, but warned that very little will
set ye throat in such a flame as has been
sometimes deadly. I love that we've got more after the break,
(16:48):
so don't go anywhere. Welcome back to Hungary for history.
A friend of the show, Ivan Vasquet, owner of Made
(17:09):
Restaurants in Los Angeles, is back. You might remember him
talking about mescal during our History of Mexican Spirits episode.
Here he is sharing what Chi less his mom and
grandmother cooked when he was growing up in Wahaca, Mexico,
how dried chi lets are used in a variety of
ways in Wahaca cuisine, and providing us some insight on
(17:29):
why cooking with chiless isn't just a fashion but a
deeply respected tradition in his community. Hello, this is the
Bambascus with Mother restaurants in Los Angeles. Here in Waha, California.
(17:54):
Of course, I have a lot of memories. I grew
up with my mom, she's a tale chice in Guahaka
and Bai Centrales. And also I grew up with my grandma,
and both of them that used to cook moles and
other salsas with roasted right chillis, including chili facia, chile,
costeno Chile, the arbor Chile, Wahillo, Chile pikin Chile, mulatto,
(18:21):
chilla marillo. Now only to make malee, but also to
make a cup of the soups you know, like poole,
chicken soup, caldo um and other gizados. Because you don't
only use dry chilis for mole. You know, it's part
of our tradition, part of our culture, part of the
genes that we have Jesus mescal. So we use dry
(18:44):
chilis and every single dish, including soups, caldos, soapass. It's
a little flavor that we add to every single dish.
The chi from Ohaka, you don't you don't buy it
(19:05):
by the weight, you buy it by the peace because
it's so rare and it's hard to find. And what happened.
But when I went to Costa Chica, one of the
regions of Ohaka with our sisters and brothers are from Mexicans.
I asked a learned you know, Hara cooked with chile
costeno and I tried one mole rojo that was unbelievable
(19:25):
made with chile cost and chilli puya, which was way
different than the chile rojo from Bias Andrales, the one
that my mom mex so so beautiful to see the
different regions and coiners and cosinero strationalies using what we
have available um as far as as rye chillis and
dry leaves and other ingredients and the communities so impressive.
(19:49):
So if we want to talk about dry chillis from Ohaka,
you know, we can spend alist a month discovering tacking
and you know, exploring different flavors, including one of my favorites,
Chilla morita. Madre, we bring the chillis from Wahaca every
(20:13):
two weeks, most of them the ones that I mentioned,
including chia, the one that is by the by the piece.
We use it for sassas, for our pole, for some
other soups as well. It's so much important to bring
the chillis from Ohaca because I want to give the
same flavors that I'm used to it. You know, we
(20:34):
do find some other dry chillas here in Guaha, California,
Los Angeles, but you you're not gonna find some of
the endemic chillis from Oahaca. And that's how we use
dry chillis. So when you go to Madre, just you know,
asked for chilla morita salza with a shrim with camarones.
It's amazing. You can try some of the mollets as well,
(20:54):
with Chilla costeno, chilla pulla and hopefully we can see
you there. Just remember that the dried chilis is not
a fashion. It's something that we grew up. It's a tradition.
Spider by culture, irants and our jeans and I definitely
have a lot of respect for the Chilis and for
my ancestors that give us this opportunity and this knowledge,
(21:19):
and to my motherland Huahaca, forgive us this diversity of
Chilis and for the people that respect whaka and cousin
in the world. Let's talk about methods, because chila. You
can have it raw, you can have it dried, you
(21:40):
could have it canned, you could have it cooked. I
mean there's so many ways to use pickled. Yeah, I
mean there's so many, so many ways it could be.
It could be a main dish, it could be a vegetable,
it could be a side dish. It could be a salsa.
So I feel like it's just a very versatile berry.
What are some of your favorite ways to make to
(22:02):
make chila? To make salsa, um, I make an amazing
tomatio salza so I but I roast all my my chile,
my tomattios, the onion, the garlic. I really roast all
of that. Get it really shot, charred, charred. I can't.
I get it really charred and uh, and then I
put in the blender and then I cook it. So
(22:23):
that's the the salsa bettaa that we eat daily. I
make it by the jar every Sunday because pepper goes
through it like water. And then Claudia, our Frank Claudia
taught me a beautiful chips which is um, really tasty
and not I don't cook that one. And it's a
red salsa that I like. That sounds delicious. So the
salza beta that you make, do you use it for
(22:44):
chips or do you make it for anchiladas everything? It's
kind of universal. Yeah, you could eat it just like that. Um,
I make it. I put on a nichiladas, I put
it on my chila quiles, I put it on anything
for breakfast. Eggs Alva to Sevy of course for that
calls anytime we make taccoles, chicken tackles, it's it's what
we use for chicken puckles. It's really yeah, it's delicious.
(23:06):
So there's salsa and then there's mole. What's the word
mule come from? What does it mean? Again? Molly comes
from the nawalmuli, which means sauce. So basically it's another
it's another sauce. It's different than the sauces that we've
been talking about, but it is a type of sauce
made with lots of dried chiless and there's so many
different types of molle. But that's a sauce that's one
(23:30):
of the most important sauces of Mexico, right, And it
just goes to show you how diverse chiles are. They
could be used in a sauce, you know, mixed with
like mule negro that has you know, chocolate. Then these
raw saltzas with fresh herbs. So there's so many different
types of salsas that can be made. You can make
(23:52):
salzas with just the seeds. You could you know, grind
the dried peppers and have a powder like the cayenne
pepper or the antro powder bahin. You could you know,
rim your glasses with with a little bit of powdered chile.
There's just so many varieties. And you mentioned the chiluckilez
that's like my favorite, one of my favorite foods in
(24:13):
the whole world, or chi luckiles and I never know,
oh my god, I never know if I want red
or green, so I always get them the orcados so
I have both. Oh yeah, I likes. Yeah. I went
to Wahaka and even though Puebla is more known as
the birthplace of mole, they say, Wahaka perfected. It's a
(24:36):
big rivalry, so you don't want to take a side. Um,
but I got to make a lot of moles, and man,
the amount of dried Chile and different Chile, and everybody
has a different recipe. You know, there's thousands and thousands
of different recipes and different ways to do mole. But
it truly is uh mole is just a marriage of
(24:57):
old and new world ingredients. Like you see the dichotomy
of the colonizer and the colonized in this molet. It's
it's actually a pretty fascinating sauce. It is. I love
I love mallets. One of my favorite things in the world,
the black morle. But yeah, there's and and like you said,
there are so many different varieties. I mean, Wahaka says
(25:18):
that they're the home to the land of the seven Morlez.
There's so many, there are so many. No, but you
know they did that for um marketing, did they really
in searching for Mexico. We talked about it in and
one of the historians from Wahaka said, that's not there's
not that's not true. There's not seven moles. That was
a marketing tool for tourism and it brought people. It
(25:39):
brought people to the region that wanted to try the
seven Moleska is so sorry. That's I didn't know that
it was a marketing because I've always said, like, there's
no way, there's so many. It's a sauce. There's like
as many as you could possibly think of making. I
did not know that there was a marketing employ And
actually when I went to Wahaka, when I said that,
I went, this was like gosh, it was like twin
(26:00):
years ago. I wanted to learn the Seven molest And
that's when I was like, wait, but there's in people
who are like, but there's just so much more, and
I was like, no, I want to learn the seven Molests.
There you go. You were you fell into our tourist trap.
What were you most surprised about this episode about Chile?
(26:22):
Um that Chile is a berry? Me too. I hope
people can try out a bunch of our salsa recipes.
You put yours off up mine and we'll post it
and see if we'll see people's comments. We should have
a chili salsa cook off. We should Hungry for History
(26:47):
is an unbelievable entertainment production in partnership with i Heearts
my Kultura podcast network. For more of your favorite shows,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get
your podcasts. The Things, the
My name is Eva Longoria and I am and welcome
to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past
and present through food. On every episode, we'll talk about
the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages.
So make yourself at home, even Rachel, can you hear
(00:28):
my hips? I know chips, some chips, we have some salsas.
I have a little I have a little tikilita here
to do you see my little shatkas. It's a chingana.
I thought i'd serve just to to to tout your
(00:49):
successive flaming heart. Thank you. Speaking of g speaking of cheam,
I'm so excited. I don't know if I anything makes
me happier than than chips and salza. It is one
of the best things in the world. So of course
we had to do an episode on Chile's and salsas,
on cheless and salsas, chiles and salas and mole but
(01:14):
a few things are better than chips in salsa. I
totally agree. And we have a couple of salzas in
front of us that I thought, yeah, we should taste. Yes,
you made these, so I made I thought, because there
are so many different varieties so many different types of
salsas with raw chile cooked dry chile. So I have
(01:36):
two salzas. The green salza is ra serrano with tomato
celantro is just raw and just is that the green one?
It's the green one. It's just raw. It's just the
raw ingredients, just put in the blender and should we
taste it? Yeah? Now is your philosophy a dipping salza
(01:57):
for chips and salsa different than salsa for inchiladas or tackles.
It depends. This green salza I would put on like
a really charred skirt steak. Oh my god, that's hot,
did you And like, I like it really spicy. I
(02:22):
love it too. This is my This is a perfect level.
I think it's really good. I mean, if I were
making anchilada susas, I would probably cook the cook the sauce,
you know, like roast dry roast the serrano and the onion.
This was just all raw. But I love a really nice,
raw fresh saltsa that has a little kick to it. No,
but this is also what you're saying, which is like
(02:43):
a fresh susa which you can taste it's not cooked.
Is great for a restaurant style. A really fresh raw salsa.
And when you when you roast everything like I do
for my salsas, it has a different it's like super complex.
It has a different, different profile. But this one's great.
And also the color is so vibrant. It's like such
(03:03):
a beautiful bright green color. When you cook it, it's
it loses that oo a little bit. But I have
a beautiful Michael Mato recipe online on my on my
Instagram if anybody wants to go get it, and I
show the difference between when I blend it and then
I cook it, and it's like almost brown green once
(03:24):
it's cooked, and the bright green is so pretty. But
you can see whenever you people go, how do you
know when it's done. I'm like, you'll see it changes color. Yeah, okay,
what's the next one? And the next one is a
red sid sack And this is this one's pretty spicy.
This is dried chile as. I use dried arbol and wahiyo,
oh my god. I roasted those with a little bit
(03:45):
of garlic and then put those in the blender and
cooked it with a little bit of oil. I can
see the olive oil. Yeah, oh that has a kick.
So the difference between Chile for me and Serrano, it's
like cheeta. The aim is like a slap in the face.
It like slaps your mouth. It's like a little more
aggressive than the said animal. I'm not saying it's hotter,
(04:08):
it's like it's different. It's a little more like it
punches you in a different way. I feel like this.
I feel it. It's funny because when I first made
it it was a lot spicier, and right now it's
like a slow burn. I feel it in the back
of my throat, whereas the other one I feel it
more in my tongue. Yeah, it's hot, it's really hot,
but you can taste it. It's more. It's super smoky.
(04:29):
I mean, just with the dried chilas on the skillet.
And this is really nice. Um. This is also great
with chips. I like this sauce. This is great with
and chiladas if you want to really hot and chilada.
But um, just with chips. If this is warm, I'd
like it a lot because it's cloth. It's nice to
have a litttle warmth. But Suld done this at the
(04:51):
end of the podcast. Mexico has a huge history of
chiless no huge, huge, huge cheese. History of Chiles and
Mexico has more chi less than any other country, but
all chi less made their way to the rest of
(05:14):
the world from Mexico. Now, what about the Asian Chiless
They were all originally from Mexico, all of them, even
if its the Thai Chile, the Thai Chile came from
a Mexican Chile. Wow, I didn't know that. Even like
Paprika and Hungary, or the bad On peppers in Spain,
(05:35):
or the Thai Chiles that are that are super spicy,
everything was from Mexico and with colonization, made their way
to different parts of the world. I did not know that.
I did not know that. So did did Chile have
a goddess like it? Was it like the corn god?
Was it worshiped just like they? Did it have a
god in Prehispanic Mexico? It did. There was a goddess.
(05:58):
And let me see if I could pronounce your name.
The goddess. Her name was Patawaki see watt Itchi sintly.
She was also known as senor So, the Senora of
the Little Red Chile. She was the sister of kla Look,
the god of Rain, and Chico the goddess of agriculture.
(06:21):
Um so she's the sister of rain and agriculture, which,
just in and of itself, tells us that this was
an important goddess. And then when you when they would
fast for religious reasons, fasting entailed abstaining from Chile and salt.
I love that, Like, that's why I should give up
for land. Is like Chile instead of wine, Chile instead
(06:46):
of wine. Okay, I'm gonna give up Chile because in
pre Hispanic Mexico that's what you did when you fasted,
abstain from Chile, which is so interesting because that was penance.
Goes to show how important it was not having salt
in your diet. I mean, not having salt in the
diet is pretty horrible, but abstaining from that was pettis.
(07:08):
So it shows you just how important it was in
the Prehistanic diet, and it's still so important in the
Mexican diet. Well, I knew Chile was from Mexico, like
I knew Chile was from Mexico, but I always thought
Asia had their own set of Chiles. So that's very interesting.
But I do know Mexico is the world's main exporter
of Chiles with over one million tons exporting annually, and
(07:31):
Mexico has the most variety of chiless. That's not surprising exactly,
but it's what it's so interesting to me. It's like, yes,
you know, Asia has different kinds of Chiles, and they
are different than the kinds that Mexico has, but that's
just because you know, they've they've been cultivated and they've
created their own chi list based on whether they want
something a little more spicy or a little bit sweeter.
(07:51):
But the original Chiles made their way their post conquest
with us. Because this spicy talk is just getting started
more after the break. The original birthplace of chiless is
(08:19):
actually Bolivia, not Mexico, but Bolivia, and eventually they were
nobody really knows how, but probably by birds exactly. They
made their way to Mexico, but Mexico. They've been domesticated
in Mexico for about eight thousand years. You know, so
two las are Mexican. I think you can say, I
think you've probably covered this in one of your art
(08:41):
byte classes of seeing the Chile in art like when
it was depicted, or even like with archaeologists, But it
feels like historically we've dismissed chiles from the diet because
they don't really have calories. They're not a protein, They're
not really a fruit or vegetable that provides any many
substance of value to your body. Did you find that
(09:05):
an art that it was left out longer than it
should have been or that's a good question. I never
really thought about that. I mean, I know that there
are these really interesting eighteenth century paintings, the Casta paintings
that really depict the different casts of society that were
super popular in Mexico during this time. The basically racial
profiling is what those paintings are, and the lower the
(09:27):
classes that are depicted in the paintings. Sometimes you actually
see chiles and other native foods in those paintings. So
what makes it chili spicy? Like physically, what makes it
spicy the seeds. So actually there's something in the chiles
called capsation, and this is a chemical. It's an alkaloid,
you know, when you open up a chili. And this
(09:47):
is something that when I was reading about this, and
I never really put two and two together. Really, I
never really thought about it. When you cut it chile open,
because the chila is a fruit it's actually a berry,
but when you cut it, chile opens, it's hollow inside.
It doesn't have any pulp. But you see it doesn't
have meat. Yeah, it doesn't have meat. But you see
those little membranides, those a little white membrandes that attached
those membranides are what have the keptation. And the keptation
(10:11):
is the chemical. It's an alkaloid, and it doesn't have
any color, it doesn't have any odor, but this is
what gives the chile its heat and its taste, and
that chemical stimulates the body in the tongue or the
skin that normally only feels pain exactly exactly, and this
(10:31):
is what it's I find so interesting. Like the first
bite of the chile effects the tongue and the brain
is telling you, oh my god, my tongue hurts, and
by doing that, it releases endorphins, which are of course,
you know, the endorphins are good. May it feel good?
They give the FILLI body with adrenaline, and so that
acts as a natural pain killer. So your brain is
(10:53):
telling you, oh my god, this hurts, but it also
it feels good. So that's why you can't stop eating
the chiles. You're burning your mouth is water. That's why
I can't stop. That's why we can't stop eating flaming
hot cheetos because it's so good, but it burns so bad,
it hurts so bad, but you can't get enough. Yeah,
when you rank the hotness of a chili, is that
technically how much of that compound it has exactly? And
(11:17):
even you know the impre colonial Mexico, the Aztecs used
to have different grades of chiles from spicy or not spicy.
But now we have this scale called the Scoville scale,
and this tells you sort of the spiciness of the chile.
Oh my god, what is the Scoville heat unit. This
(11:40):
is the method, a scientific method that rates the strength
of peppers, and it was devised in nineteen twelve by
an American pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville, sort of genius. The
way that he did this, so he takes the chiless,
the concentrated chiless, dilutes them in water and sugar, and
the number of times needed to loot the solution until
(12:01):
there's no trace of flavor indicates the degree of heat.
The bell pepper is zero. The avanos that are the
spiciest ones from Mexico land somewhere between one hundred to
three hundred and fifty thousand, and this Carolina Reaper that
I've never tasted is two point two million on this scale. Wow.
So it's the hottest chili in the world. It's the
(12:23):
hottest chili in the world. Where does the word chile
or pepper come from. Is there a native word for it? Yes,
for Chili, there's a native word for chiless. So Chile
comes from the now, while chili, right, So this is
sort of a direct, you know, obvious, you know connection.
But the word pepper comes from Columbus. Christopher Columbus when
(12:44):
he landed in the Caribbean encountered chiless on his first voyage,
and he called them peppers of the Indies. You know.
He was looking for a trade route for peppers and
they found these cheerless so he called them peppers, even
though they're not peppers. They're not but pchanically related to
pepper corns. But this is where the word pepper comes from.
(13:05):
So we have pepper, we have the word chile comes
from the now Chili, and then in South America, like
in Peru and also in the Caribbean, they called chiles
ahis and this is from a Taino word that they
used to call the pepper's ashi um in Santo l Amingo.
And this is where the word ahi comes from. So
(13:27):
basically those are the three. Where does the word bca
come from? That I'm but I pikas means it. If
something becas, it means it. But what I know, vica,
But Gina's were also used for many things. It wasn't
just to be eaten or seasoning of food. It was
(13:49):
used as a weapon as well. Didn't the Aztecs burn
it to create barriers for enemies and stuff like that. Yeah,
they were use it basically as chemical warfare, like a
few bacon. And there's an interesting the codex called the
Codex Mendoza, and you see they would have they would
they would punish misbehaving children by seating them in front
(14:09):
of burning cheeless. Oh my god, that seems very extreme.
It seems horrible. Burning cheeless was also a very important
part of ceremonies, which you still see in this day
in certain ceremonies. And also this is something that's done
to keep you know, to get rid of the maldojo,
to get rid of the evil eye. Yeah. Well, and
and Gina also has some health benefits, right for sure.
(14:32):
It has you know, high vitamin C, it has vitamin B, keroteen,
it has a bunch of antioxidants. When Cortez came and
some of the first things he sent back to the
(14:54):
to the Old World and to specifically the Queen of
Spain was chocolate, it the tomato, and chile. And she
loved the chocolate, and she loved the tomato. And when
she tasted the chile, Chilo, yeah, sent chilo. She she
got bit by the by the pepper, says like she
(15:16):
was like, no, not not having this. Well, they were
growing the chiles in monasteries, so in Spain um they
were growing them and monitors because the plant is so pretty.
What was the European reaction to Chile's because they were
cheap and easy to grow. When Chile's did make their
way in, you know, to Europe, they sort of spread right,
(15:36):
and it was grown as a beautiful, you know plant.
But the lower classes started using it the same way
as black pepper. And this is sort of fifteen hundreds,
the beginning of the Renaissance, and for so many years
during the Middle Ages, the very wealthy tables used to
use a lot of heavy spices, particularly black pepper, but
also things like cinnamon and cuman like, really very lots
(15:59):
of ices. But once we get Chiles and the lower
classes could add some of that to their foods, than
they're really wealthy didn't want it anymore, right, So it
was no longer eating spices, was no longer a status symbol.
But there was a lot of you know, like you said,
you know, the queen didn't want the Chiles. But there's
(16:22):
this English gardener and writer named John Evelyn, and he
was writing to the Earl of Sandwich, who was ambassador
to the Court of Spain in the seventeenth century, and
he talks about the beauty of their fruit. He compared
it to polished coral, but warned that very little will
set ye throat in such a flame as has been
sometimes deadly. I love that we've got more after the break,
(16:48):
so don't go anywhere. Welcome back to Hungary for history.
A friend of the show, Ivan Vasquet, owner of Made
(17:09):
Restaurants in Los Angeles, is back. You might remember him
talking about mescal during our History of Mexican Spirits episode.
Here he is sharing what Chi less his mom and
grandmother cooked when he was growing up in Wahaca, Mexico,
how dried chi lets are used in a variety of
ways in Wahaca cuisine, and providing us some insight on
(17:29):
why cooking with chiless isn't just a fashion but a
deeply respected tradition in his community. Hello, this is the
Bambascus with Mother restaurants in Los Angeles. Here in Waha, California.
(17:54):
Of course, I have a lot of memories. I grew
up with my mom, she's a tale chice in Guahaka
and Bai Centrales. And also I grew up with my grandma,
and both of them that used to cook moles and
other salsas with roasted right chillis, including chili facia, chile,
costeno Chile, the arbor Chile, Wahillo, Chile pikin Chile, mulatto,
(18:21):
chilla marillo. Now only to make malee, but also to
make a cup of the soups you know, like poole,
chicken soup, caldo um and other gizados. Because you don't
only use dry chilis for mole. You know, it's part
of our tradition, part of our culture, part of the
genes that we have Jesus mescal. So we use dry
(18:44):
chilis and every single dish, including soups, caldos, soapass. It's
a little flavor that we add to every single dish.
The chi from Ohaka, you don't you don't buy it
(19:05):
by the weight, you buy it by the peace because
it's so rare and it's hard to find. And what happened.
But when I went to Costa Chica, one of the
regions of Ohaka with our sisters and brothers are from Mexicans.
I asked a learned you know, Hara cooked with chile
costeno and I tried one mole rojo that was unbelievable
(19:25):
made with chile cost and chilli puya, which was way
different than the chile rojo from Bias Andrales, the one
that my mom mex so so beautiful to see the
different regions and coiners and cosinero strationalies using what we
have available um as far as as rye chillis and
dry leaves and other ingredients and the communities so impressive.
(19:49):
So if we want to talk about dry chillis from Ohaka,
you know, we can spend alist a month discovering tacking
and you know, exploring different flavors, including one of my favorites,
Chilla morita. Madre, we bring the chillis from Wahaca every
(20:13):
two weeks, most of them the ones that I mentioned,
including chia, the one that is by the by the piece.
We use it for sassas, for our pole, for some
other soups as well. It's so much important to bring
the chillis from Ohaca because I want to give the
same flavors that I'm used to it. You know, we
(20:34):
do find some other dry chillas here in Guaha, California,
Los Angeles, but you you're not gonna find some of
the endemic chillis from Oahaca. And that's how we use
dry chillis. So when you go to Madre, just you know,
asked for chilla morita salza with a shrim with camarones.
It's amazing. You can try some of the mollets as well,
(20:54):
with Chilla costeno, chilla pulla and hopefully we can see
you there. Just remember that the dried chilis is not
a fashion. It's something that we grew up. It's a tradition.
Spider by culture, irants and our jeans and I definitely
have a lot of respect for the Chilis and for
my ancestors that give us this opportunity and this knowledge,
(21:19):
and to my motherland Huahaca, forgive us this diversity of
Chilis and for the people that respect whaka and cousin
in the world. Let's talk about methods, because chila. You
can have it raw, you can have it dried, you
(21:40):
could have it canned, you could have it cooked. I
mean there's so many ways to use pickled. Yeah, I
mean there's so many, so many ways it could be.
It could be a main dish, it could be a vegetable,
it could be a side dish. It could be a salsa.
So I feel like it's just a very versatile berry.
What are some of your favorite ways to make to
(22:02):
make chila? To make salsa, um, I make an amazing
tomatio salza so I but I roast all my my chile,
my tomattios, the onion, the garlic. I really roast all
of that. Get it really shot, charred, charred. I can't.
I get it really charred and uh, and then I
put in the blender and then I cook it. So
(22:23):
that's the the salsa bettaa that we eat daily. I
make it by the jar every Sunday because pepper goes
through it like water. And then Claudia, our Frank Claudia
taught me a beautiful chips which is um, really tasty
and not I don't cook that one. And it's a
red salsa that I like. That sounds delicious. So the
salza beta that you make, do you use it for
(22:44):
chips or do you make it for anchiladas everything? It's
kind of universal. Yeah, you could eat it just like that. Um,
I make it. I put on a nichiladas, I put
it on my chila quiles, I put it on anything
for breakfast. Eggs Alva to Sevy of course for that
calls anytime we make taccoles, chicken tackles, it's it's what
we use for chicken puckles. It's really yeah, it's delicious.
(23:06):
So there's salsa and then there's mole. What's the word
mule come from? What does it mean? Again? Molly comes
from the nawalmuli, which means sauce. So basically it's another
it's another sauce. It's different than the sauces that we've
been talking about, but it is a type of sauce
made with lots of dried chiless and there's so many
different types of molle. But that's a sauce that's one
(23:30):
of the most important sauces of Mexico, right, And it
just goes to show you how diverse chiles are. They
could be used in a sauce, you know, mixed with
like mule negro that has you know, chocolate. Then these
raw saltzas with fresh herbs. So there's so many different
types of salsas that can be made. You can make
(23:52):
salzas with just the seeds. You could you know, grind
the dried peppers and have a powder like the cayenne
pepper or the antro powder bahin. You could you know,
rim your glasses with with a little bit of powdered chile.
There's just so many varieties. And you mentioned the chiluckilez
that's like my favorite, one of my favorite foods in
(24:13):
the whole world, or chi luckiles and I never know,
oh my god, I never know if I want red
or green, so I always get them the orcados so
I have both. Oh yeah, I likes. Yeah. I went
to Wahaka and even though Puebla is more known as
the birthplace of mole, they say, Wahaka perfected. It's a
(24:36):
big rivalry, so you don't want to take a side. Um,
but I got to make a lot of moles, and man,
the amount of dried Chile and different Chile, and everybody
has a different recipe. You know, there's thousands and thousands
of different recipes and different ways to do mole. But
it truly is uh mole is just a marriage of
(24:57):
old and new world ingredients. Like you see the dichotomy
of the colonizer and the colonized in this molet. It's
it's actually a pretty fascinating sauce. It is. I love
I love mallets. One of my favorite things in the world,
the black morle. But yeah, there's and and like you said,
there are so many different varieties. I mean, Wahaka says
(25:18):
that they're the home to the land of the seven Morlez.
There's so many, there are so many. No, but you
know they did that for um marketing, did they really
in searching for Mexico. We talked about it in and
one of the historians from Wahaka said, that's not there's
not that's not true. There's not seven moles. That was
a marketing tool for tourism and it brought people. It
(25:39):
brought people to the region that wanted to try the
seven Moleska is so sorry. That's I didn't know that
it was a marketing because I've always said, like, there's
no way, there's so many. It's a sauce. There's like
as many as you could possibly think of making. I
did not know that there was a marketing employ And
actually when I went to Wahaka, when I said that,
I went, this was like gosh, it was like twin
(26:00):
years ago. I wanted to learn the Seven molest And
that's when I was like, wait, but there's in people
who are like, but there's just so much more, and
I was like, no, I want to learn the seven Molests.
There you go. You were you fell into our tourist trap.
What were you most surprised about this episode about Chile?
(26:22):
Um that Chile is a berry? Me too. I hope
people can try out a bunch of our salsa recipes.
You put yours off up mine and we'll post it
and see if we'll see people's comments. We should have
a chili salsa cook off. We should Hungry for History
(26:47):
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