Watercress can have quite a hot, radishy bite. For this reason, I like to mix it with milder, sweeter stuff in a salad (like slivered cucumbers).
So are Posh and Baby 
[/hijack] Sorry, had to.
The red pepper in curry powder is a chili pepper, so it is disqualified by the OP.
Arugula can be kind of peppery, but I think it is a relative of mustard.
How about radishes?
Naw, Mary Ann all the way.
Me sorry, too.
Fennel seeds add a bit of heat to some recepies, I find. Also, after having used ground comino in many southwestern dishes, I finally undertook grinding my own, and was suprised to find just how spicy it was when fresh.
I am interested in people finding Cilantro hot. I have never found its taste in any way hot myself, and often eat large ammounts of fresh cilantro (coriander leaf). Do many people here find the taste hot? I’d like to know before I inflict too much spicyness on someone who does find it hot, simply because I cannot taste thet hotness.
FYI, I was puzzled by that, too. I can graze on cilantro. Don’t find it hot spicy in any sense of the word. If anything, I find it “cool” and “green.” Then again, some people find cilantro to taste “soapy,” so it’s possible that certain folk perceive tastes others can’t.
Then there must be some kind of difference between “Szechuan peppercorns” and what Chinese restaurants in California call “Szechuan peppers”.
Because there’s no lack of Szechuan peppers in California-based Chinese cooking, and those suckers are HOT!
Yep, no Chinese Restaurant in CA can legally use Szechuan Pepper Corns in there food (though I believe I have tasted the real thing in a few Chinese restaurants in CA). Szechuan food is often spicy with dried chilli peppers which is probably what they are calling Szechuan Peppers at your restaurant. You may be able to find real Szechuan pepper corns in China town sold in the non-food section of a shop if you are lucky. They taste a bit like a mixture off black pepper cloves and rosemary, a sort of flowery scented black pepper.
The reason cilantro tastes “soapy” to some people is that they have an allergy to it. Speaking as someone who has a mild allergy to it, I can testify that even the oils from cilantro, once they get released into a dish, render the whole thing “soapy” to my tastebuds.
The first few times I ate cilantro, it had a powerful soapy taste. Now, though, it doesn’t taste soapy at all. Somehow I have become unable to detect that flavour. I think this is how one acquires a taste for cilantro.
Yeah, round these parts, there’s no such thing as “too much cilantro.” I’ve never detected so much as a hint of spiciness. On the contrary, I use it as a “cool flavor” to contrast with spicier flavors. I’d love to see someone expound on spicy cilantro. Is there a different variety, perhaps?
Cilantro: I also can eat handfuls of it. No soapy taste, though I have friends who report that. I grow my own Cilantro when I’m able to, as I use so much of it and it doesn’t stay fresh in the fridge long, and dried Cilantro to me, is useless.
Cumin: My brother can’t eat it, as it upsets his stomach the way hot food would. I like it, but if I use too much, it can be sort of bitter.
Turmeric: I use it all the time, and don’t find it hot at all. If I use too much then like Cumin, it can be a bit bitter, but I don’t consider bitter to be “hot.”
Paprika: Isn’t that basically just ground Red Bell Pepper? OK, maybe it’s not technically a bell pepper, but it’s mild. Sort of like Pimento. And a new world pepper. I think in some European languages paprika is synonymous with hot pepper, which leads to confusion. Here in the States, I think of Paprika as “red powder” that you sprinkle on potato & egg salad to make it look more appetizing, but adding no flavor or “heat.”
I agree mint and anise could be considered “hot.” Sort of.
I’ve eaten tons of the stuff (Vietnamese cooking is loaded with it) and it’s always tasted soapy to me.
Pulykamell’s paprika lesson to follow:
The red peppers used to make paprika in Hungary look exactly like this.
They do have a decent amount of heat to them. The method for the production of Hungarian paprika in Szeged (one of two major paprika producers, the other being Kalocsa) is to grind them in a closed system between stones and steel cylinders. The friction creates heat which also helps to release the essential oils and slightly caramelizes the sugars, which contributes to intensifying its flavor.
The method for regulating the heat in paprika involves removing the stalks and seeds from the peppers before grinding them. These parts contain capsaicin (which gives us the heat in hot peppers.) Despite the reputation for Hungarians liking spicy food (which is mostly false, in my experience), sweet varieties of paprika dominate the market.
Over the years, Hungarian growers have bred sweeter strains of this pepper, such that seed and stalk removal is unnecessary in the production of the powder. (Incidentally, IIRC, originally all forms of peppers contained detectable amounts of capsaicin and the sweet bell peppers that we know today have been created by breeding out the spicier varieties.)
As I alluded to before, Hungarian paprika comes in many varieties, the main ones being: special, mild, delicatess, sweet, semisweet, rose, and hot. Sweet is probably the most common in cuisine.
While paprika in American cuisine is normally used for color (as in the aforementioned egg salad, as well as dusting on chicken or other meats to be roasted to impart a pleasant brown color), paprika in Hungary is used extensively for its flavoring, and a little goes a long way. Typically, for two to three pounds of meat in a stew, only 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of paprika is necessary. The trick is to add the paprika to the oil near the beginning of the recipe. Paprika is not water soluble—it needs to be steeped in oil (like many other spices) to release its flavor. The standard Hungarian technique is to add the paprika after the veggies (normally onions) are finished frying in the oil/lard. Take the pan off the heat (to avoid scorching the paprika) and add the spice. When it’s dissolved, after about 30 seconds or a minute, add the meat and return to heat. The water content of the meat should keep the paprika from scorching. Dissolving paprika in oil is the key to getting the flavor out of it. Otherwise, it floats to the top and doesn’t release its goodness throughout the dish.
And thus endeth the lesson.
Paprika is still a new world pepper and the heat is due to capsaicin. It is a type of chili pepper that was transplanted to the old world and developed into an interesting variation.
Indeed. Here’s the Wikipedia article on chile peppers of the genus Capsicum – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilli_pepper – a grouping which includes red and green bell peppers and sweet Italian peppers, which have no heat at all. And here’s a pictorial guide to chile peppers, with their hotness (capsaicin content) ratings in Scoville units: http://members.visi.net/~mandy/pepguide.html
But let’s get back to non-chile-derived hot spices!
[QUOTE=pulykamellThe trick is to add the paprika to the oil near the beginning of the recipe. Paprika is not water soluble—it needs to be steeped in oil (like many other spices) to release its flavor. The standard Hungarian technique is to add the paprika after the veggies (normally onions) are finished frying in the oil/lard. Take the pan off the heat (to avoid scorching the paprika) and add the spice. When it’s dissolved, after about 30 seconds or a minute, add the meat and return to heat. The water content of the meat should keep the paprika from scorching. Dissolving paprika in oil is the key to getting the flavor out of it. Otherwise, it floats to the top and doesn’t release its goodness throughout the dish.[/QUOTE]
:eek: !!! Does the bolded part apply to paprika only, or to chile-derived spices generally? Every chili recipe I’ve ever seen, that involves using any kind of dried powdered chile (e.g., “chile powder,” or cayenne pepper), prescribes adding the spice at a later stage, after the sauteeing of the onions and the browning of the meat! Have chiliheads been doing it wrong all these years?!
Sorry, flubbed the coding. By “bolded part,” I meant the sentence, **
“The trick is to add the paprika to the oil near the beginning of the recipe.”**