The New Nation - Internet Edition

Mohammad Shahidul Islam

To most non-Asian, chili is something of an exigent quirk in the cuisine. What kind of vegetable makes a person breaks into a sweat and yelp and howls and gasps for relief, all at the same time? Or worse, makes you scoot to the loo right after consuming it. There is little room in mainstream cookery for food so potently flavored and impolite, they dispute.

To a Bhutanese, however, ema (chili) holds an exalted culinary position. It is not just a food or a fashion. It is the stuff of life. It is integral Bhutanese heritage and culture.

It is not just the vegetable; it's the taste. A bowl of black dhal or a cauliflower sabzi in a diner in India is likely to contain some chilies, and would be considered very hot by most people there. But that, as every Bhutanese who has studied in India would vouch, is piddling compared with the blistering fury of a highland Bhutanese chili. But it is not raw heat that makes Bhutanese chilies distinctive. It is their incomparable sharp flavor, which some describe as succulent and earthy, with a clarity that seems to reflect the taste and smell of the skies and landscapes of Bhutan.

Bhutanese eat chili raw or cooked, minced or roasted, but no Bhutanese dish is complete without ema. And young toddlers are initiated in the art of chili eating early on. Parents pick meat or vegetables from the chili dish, suck it to moderate the heat, and then feed their child, who breaks into a sweat but quickly adapts.

Ézay is one of Bhutan's favorite chili progenies. First, roast the chili pods and shred over a wooden mortar. Next roast traditional green tomatoes, then carefully drop its insides into the mortar. These are followed by roasted thing nay and coriander leaves. Salt is added. It is a mouth-watering sight. The roasted pods smell tastily pungent, and, as the bottom of the round-bottomed ladle grinds them gently, their blackened flesh turned supple and they glisten celadon green. When they are retrieved from the mortar, they give off the unique perfume of an authentic lip-smacking Bhutanese ézay: sharp and robust.

How can one forget ema datsi? The dish is chili cooked with cheese and it is a quintessential Bhutanese dish. For some, especially Bhutanese living abroad, the very thought of ema coated with cheese is enough to send their taste buds tingling into feverish desire. There isn't a restaurant in the entire kingdom that does not have ema datsi on its menu. It occupies a special place, in the high culinary company of matsutake mushroom. Only this is cheaper and readily available.

The origin of ema, let alone of ema datsi, in Bhutan is a hard one to trace. The beginning is fuzzy at best and the key characters and witnesses are long dead. This much is known, however, that the ema is not indigenous to the Himalayas, much less to Bhutan, and that it originated in South America. The Portuguese are said to have introduced the chilies in Asia. Once the chili arrived in Calcutta … it must not have taken too long for its flavors to spread northwards. The spread of ema in the country to Bhutanese has been done by traders and pilgrims of yore.

But it is also here that the fruit of the Capsicum plant -ema- has been elevated from a cash crop to a cultural favorite, a national dish. Today, along with those who boast they are from the land of thundering dragon or GNH, there are also many Bhutanese, who are proud to say that they are chilli-heads and who make a big point of distinguishing their food from that of others- and a central difference is the crucial role that chillis play.

The reason that Bhutanese actually enjoy eating alarmingly hot chili is not culinary masochism. Capsaicin, the chemical from the chilli, provokes pleasure as well as pain, but a satisfying one at that.

According to scientists, chilli sends the nervous system into a state of panic, and the brain reacts by flooding the distressed nerve endings with endorphins, which are the body's natural painkillers - a sort of friendly morphine. The sudden shot of endorphins is what transforms the pang of hot food into pleasure, and also what makes it tolerable after the first few bites.

Doctors also say that the flavour and bite of chillies is as fundamentally good as the pungency of salt and the luxury of butterfat - with the added attractions that chilies are loaded with vitamins A and C, are cholesterol-free, and are a source of medicines that cure ailments ranging from rhinitis to phantom-limb pain. Dried ema on embers are also a nemesis to evil spirits. Beat that!

Mohammad Shahidul Islam, Tourism worker, studied Heritage and Buddhism in Bhutan.