I have a decently high spice tolerance.
This fact tends to surprise people; after all, Taiwanese food isn't pushing any Scoville records. But when the question comes up, I wind up telling the same story, which I will recount below.
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It starts from when I was in elementary school.
Elementary school me was not so tolerant of spice. In fact, I was rather picky. Picky, however, did not fly in an Asian household. In my household, if you threw up what you had just eaten—even if it was disgusting multivitamin pills—you had to pick up the remains of your puke and eat that too. If not, it was wasteful. Most importantly, at restaurants, you made sure to finish everything. Otherwise, you disrespected the chef's food.
That being said, I was rather spoiled. I didn't make my own breakfast; instead, my father made it for me. Microwaved bread, sometimes wth cheese inside, probably having sat at the counter for thirty minutes, sopping up its condensate juices from the plate it sat on. Or it was stale baguette bread, the kind that sliced the roof of your mouth open. Nowadays, I don't think I could stomach eating food like that again. But back then, I think this food was my normal. To me, food necessitated a little bit of suffering and discomfort. The enjoyment of eating needed to have a counterweight, a moment of pain or disgust.
As I grew older, things changed. Surprisingly, I made it to high school, where I was decent enough at violin to get into All-State, a state-wide music event. In ninth grade, it was held in Yakima, WA, which, to put it mildly, was extremely white. No good Asian food in sight. Your common suburbial sushi place? Gone. Maybe there's a diner on the other side of town. Or maybe a gaggle of restaurants somewhere. It was extremely white.
Now, "extremely white" hasn't exactly stopped Asian restaurants from popping up in the least expected places. As for quality, either it was the lowest of the low, or it was unusually put-together and authentic. I can't seem to think that there would be an "Okay" rural Asian restaurant in the states. Just "Super bad" and "Oh, this is actually good."
For my transport to Yakima, I had to carpool with two of my sister's friends (now ex-friends). Past the two-hour drive, it quickly became 11 o'clock and we were hungry. One of us had the brilliant idea to search for a restaurant using Google Maps (or was it Apple Maps?). We soon came across this Viet-Thai fusion restaurant for lunch, and the food selections were surprisingly promising.
When I ordered my noodles, the server then asked, "One to five, how spicy?"
The rebellious me did not hesitate. "Five," I replied.
Then the food came out, and I took a bite.
My entire mouth started to burn like crazy, and I could only chug iced water with each bite. My forehead was dripping with sweat, and I could feel my nose running as if though I had a cold. My lips soon began to burn, and with that, the entire lower third of my face.
And yet, I kept eating. I couldn't just stop halfway.
Eventually, I somehow managed to scrape the plate clean. Not without going to the restroom once in the middle and having three refills of water. But otherwise, I had done it.
In the wake of my finished, empty plate, I began to realize something. To my newly refined palate, unbearably spicy food had become the new golden standard. Through the course of that meal, the food brought me discomfort, but this discomfort was enjoyable. After all, this time, I chose the food. It wasn't my own puke, nor was it my father's lame attempts at breakfast food. And coming from my Taiwanese roots where truly spicy food was scarce, I began to realize that I wanted even more of this oral and digestive suffering that spiciness had given me.
Of course, a change in philosophy aside, I soon began to realize something much weirder. After lunch, we quickly headed to the site where All-State was being held, and we registered ourselves in. A three-hour rehearsal later, we high-schoolers were provided a meager fifteen minute break, during which some other kid handed me a bag of spicy cheetos. They had always tasted unbearably spicy to me in the past, but I decided I needed more spice there and then. Thus, I ripped open the bag and popped one cheeto into my mouth, and chewed. And then I stopped chewing. It wasn't spicy anymore. Sour, slightly cheesy, a bit of sweetness, predominantly salty, but spicy? Where did the spiciness go?
It was only then that I realized that my spice tolerance had permanently changed, along with my guiding philosophy to food.
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Now, people who have heard this story think that I'm either clinically insane or a masochist. Or both. Rest assured, I am neither of those. Since my formative years, I have gained a much more refined taste when it came to the flavor profiles of different capsicum peppers. It probably helps that my tolerance to spice has become this high, but I think that it has really helped me in developing my interest in cooking and tasting food. And having this higher spice tolerance really helped me increase my comfort zone as to what I want to try. For one, fried crickets, ant eggs, and casu martzu all share a special place on my To-Eat List as does egusi soup or milkfish congee. I now have a deep-seated interest in trying as many new foods as I can, alongside trying spicier and spicier foods. My goal one day is to be able to eat a whole Carolina Reaper. Unfortunately, those days are not yet here; I can only make do with snacking on habaneros right now. Which, as I have found, are almost berry-like and floral in taste.