10-12-2011, 10:10 PM
I would like to officially disagree that "bland" is bad. When I eat food, I want to taste the food. I want to eat pork and be able to taste pork -- not have it be pork textured peppers, because it was so spicy that all you could taste was the spice. I do mild chili because I like the taste of chili. I want to taste beef and beans and onions and cheese and bell peppers. I don't want it to basically be a soup that tastes entirely of "ARGH" because all of the individual tastes have been pounded into oblivion by a heap of spicy peppers.
A lot of Thai food can be like this. Technically you're eating beef and noodles. It doesn't taste like beef or noodles. It tastes like burning. You could replace the beef and noodles with tofu and rat intestines and probably not notice any difference in taste because all you can taste is the spice anyway. The taste of noodles and beef is completely overwhelmed and is purely there for texture. Having to eat tofu and rat intestine is probably how overly spicy food got invented in the first place ("Oh god this is awful. Here, add a pound of dried peppers. SWEET JESUS THIS IS HOT. WELL AT LEAST WE CAN'T TASTE THE RAT.") Later, when people stopped being poor, they were able to upgrade to better ingredients but didn't notice the difference because they kept it just as spicy as before.
A lot of Thai food can be like this. Technically you're eating beef and noodles. It doesn't taste like beef or noodles. It tastes like burning. You could replace the beef and noodles with tofu and rat intestines and probably not notice any difference in taste because all you can taste is the spice anyway. The taste of noodles and beef is completely overwhelmed and is purely there for texture. Having to eat tofu and rat intestine is probably how overly spicy food got invented in the first place ("Oh god this is awful. Here, add a pound of dried peppers. SWEET JESUS THIS IS HOT. WELL AT LEAST WE CAN'T TASTE THE RAT.") Later, when people stopped being poor, they were able to upgrade to better ingredients but didn't notice the difference because they kept it just as spicy as before.