Bird's eye chili
By Lonneke — July 12, 2017 03:06 pm
My love would eat a different curry each night while we were in Thailand for a month.
The bird's eye chili is small, but it is quite hot, many times more spicy than a jalapeño. Sometimes it is called Thai chili and they put it in green curry. Of course we came across this firy devil in India and Sri Lanka already. In fact, the food on the Indian subcontinent was generally far above our coping level. In Thailand, it was much easier to find an edible dish, especially for the boys. But my love always eats as much local food as he can, so he feasted on red curry, Thai curry, Penang curry, massaman curry, and the piquant green curry, of course, without batting an eye.
I like the stories surrounding the name 'massaman curry'; some say it derives from 'Muslim man' (the archaic Mussulman), others insist that it is influenced by Malay and Indian cuisine - 'masam' means sour. Either way: it's delicious and nutricious.
Mostly we'd walk to a small eatery by the side of the road, nearby our beach huts on Ko Samui: it was aptly named Porn, the common denominator being that it was hot also, I guess. It was run by two grumpy old ladies, cooking and serving us, never showing that they'd seen us the night before, and the night before that, too. Quite unusual, especially since the boys were quite skilled at befriending people at favourite eateries. But the food was alright and affordable and it beat eating at the touristy joints along the beach.
But let's get back to the Thai dragon, this boonie pepper: my love immediately pictured this image of a phoenix crying these tiny peppers. He got his inspiration for this phoenix from a mural in a Thai temple.
The phoenix dies in a show of flames and combustion, you can imagine him shedding a tear in the process, a tear from this birds eye, for us to enjoy and causing tears to spring from our eyes.
