I love to burn.
No, I'm not an arsonist; I'm a spicy food fanatic.
Hot sauces, chilli peppers, spices, I love it all. From the first slice of the pain on my tongue to the sweats, the panting, and the burning, and on to the time that the fire dies down to a smoldering cinder and I can lay back and revel in post-spicy bliss. The word mild doesn't exist for me, and I have encountered very few foods which are not improved by Tabasco, Frank's, or Sriracha sauce.
Given this, I was thrilled, and shocked, to find out that there would be a chilli festival in Brno at the beginning of September.
While many of my fellow Americans, along with many Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians share a love of spicy food, Czech cuisine is not exactly known for the heat of its dishes. In fact, spicy food basically doesn't exist here unless it's made by a foreigner. To give you an idea of their aversion to spice, a Czech once told me that she found the regular KFC chicken too spicy. As in spicy hot. As in it burned her mouth to an uncomfortable degree.
So the fact that there was a chilli festival in Brno, Czech Republic, is a pretty amazing thing in and of itself.
Granted, it wasn't the biggest chilli festival in the world. But over the course of the day a few thousand people showed up to try out some locally produced hot sauces and locally grown spicy peppers. One Czech brand of habanero sauce actually made me have to sit down for a few minutes. I didn't think they had it in them.
And of course, then there was the chilli eating contest.
Now, when I say that I love spicy food, I mean that I love the taste, the fire, the sweat, and the post-coital-esque afterglow. I don't eat spicy things become it shows how tough I am. I want a fiery flavor adventure – if I wanted pain I would just punch myself in the face.
And for a couple of hours that day, I watched 50 people repeatedly punch themselves in the face.
They started small, with just some mild sauce and jalapeños. But by round four things had heated up (pun intended) and they were already eating full habanero peppers. That's when the weakest started to crack. As the burn accumulated from round and their mouths got hotter, they sweated, they cried, and then they turned to the yoghurt, and disqualification, in order to return to sanity and sooth the burn.
In the later rounds, where insane hot sauces and full Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Peppers were used to separate the idiots from the idiots who hurt themselves for fun, that's when the vomiting started. Let me just say, having vomited once after eating some really hot buffalo wings, it burns a whole lot more when it's heading the wrong direction.
These unfortunate souls lost their lunch, and their ability to continue, with some being helped to the medical tent by EMTs. Oh, did I not mention that there was a medical tent? That might be a bit of a warning that what you are about to do is not actually a good idea.
In the end, there were two: A large gentleman, and a gentleman with a moustache.
They had reached the final round, where one would be crowned Chilli Eating Champion of the Czech Republic, and the other would feel disgusted to know that the possible permanent damage they have inflicted on their digestive tract would only amount to 2nd place.
The challenge? Pure capsaicin extract. As in the part of the chilli that causes the pain, without all that other bothersome stuff like the actual chilli.
When the gong sounded, they both shoved the spoon in their mouths while we waited with baited breath to see if one of their heads was going to explode, like in Scanners. But it was not to be. In fact, they both sat there, pink as a five-year-old girl's birthday party, but unbowed.
It was an incredible display of human tenacity in the face of adver...OK, I can't finish that with a straight face. It was two guys trying to outmanify each other for a title that is about as important as being the team handball champion of the USA.
The organizers, having expected that all the competitors had at least some semblance of sense, hadn't planned for another round to determine the winner. So they simply said that they would have to do it again. Capsaicin extract: 16 million Scoville Units. A second time.
With that announcement, the larger of the two said something to the moustachioed gentleman, then raised his opponent's hand a declared that he finally realized the error of his ways, and wasn't doing that again. Moustache had triumphed over all comers, and could be proud to call himself the Chilli Eating Champion of the Czech Republic and claim the 3000 Kc ($140 USD) prize that went with it.
And while the thrill of victory certainly washed over him at that time, I'm sure he wasn't so thrilled when he went to the bathroom the following morning.
As for me, while I am intelligent enough to avoid entering a pain-endurance contest, I was inspired to reach higher on the spice ladder. So I bought a Bhut Jolokia, a.k.a. Ghost Chilli, a.k.a the third hottest chilli pepper in the world.
But that's a story for another day.
No, I'm not an arsonist; I'm a spicy food fanatic.
Hot sauces, chilli peppers, spices, I love it all. From the first slice of the pain on my tongue to the sweats, the panting, and the burning, and on to the time that the fire dies down to a smoldering cinder and I can lay back and revel in post-spicy bliss. The word mild doesn't exist for me, and I have encountered very few foods which are not improved by Tabasco, Frank's, or Sriracha sauce.
Given this, I was thrilled, and shocked, to find out that there would be a chilli festival in Brno at the beginning of September.
While many of my fellow Americans, along with many Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians share a love of spicy food, Czech cuisine is not exactly known for the heat of its dishes. In fact, spicy food basically doesn't exist here unless it's made by a foreigner. To give you an idea of their aversion to spice, a Czech once told me that she found the regular KFC chicken too spicy. As in spicy hot. As in it burned her mouth to an uncomfortable degree.
So the fact that there was a chilli festival in Brno, Czech Republic, is a pretty amazing thing in and of itself.
Granted, it wasn't the biggest chilli festival in the world. But over the course of the day a few thousand people showed up to try out some locally produced hot sauces and locally grown spicy peppers. One Czech brand of habanero sauce actually made me have to sit down for a few minutes. I didn't think they had it in them.
And of course, then there was the chilli eating contest.
Now, when I say that I love spicy food, I mean that I love the taste, the fire, the sweat, and the post-coital-esque afterglow. I don't eat spicy things become it shows how tough I am. I want a fiery flavor adventure – if I wanted pain I would just punch myself in the face.
And for a couple of hours that day, I watched 50 people repeatedly punch themselves in the face.
They started small, with just some mild sauce and jalapeños. But by round four things had heated up (pun intended) and they were already eating full habanero peppers. That's when the weakest started to crack. As the burn accumulated from round and their mouths got hotter, they sweated, they cried, and then they turned to the yoghurt, and disqualification, in order to return to sanity and sooth the burn.
In the later rounds, where insane hot sauces and full Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Peppers were used to separate the idiots from the idiots who hurt themselves for fun, that's when the vomiting started. Let me just say, having vomited once after eating some really hot buffalo wings, it burns a whole lot more when it's heading the wrong direction.
These unfortunate souls lost their lunch, and their ability to continue, with some being helped to the medical tent by EMTs. Oh, did I not mention that there was a medical tent? That might be a bit of a warning that what you are about to do is not actually a good idea.
In the end, there were two: A large gentleman, and a gentleman with a moustache.
They had reached the final round, where one would be crowned Chilli Eating Champion of the Czech Republic, and the other would feel disgusted to know that the possible permanent damage they have inflicted on their digestive tract would only amount to 2nd place.
The challenge? Pure capsaicin extract. As in the part of the chilli that causes the pain, without all that other bothersome stuff like the actual chilli.
When the gong sounded, they both shoved the spoon in their mouths while we waited with baited breath to see if one of their heads was going to explode, like in Scanners. But it was not to be. In fact, they both sat there, pink as a five-year-old girl's birthday party, but unbowed.
It was an incredible display of human tenacity in the face of adver...OK, I can't finish that with a straight face. It was two guys trying to outmanify each other for a title that is about as important as being the team handball champion of the USA.
The organizers, having expected that all the competitors had at least some semblance of sense, hadn't planned for another round to determine the winner. So they simply said that they would have to do it again. Capsaicin extract: 16 million Scoville Units. A second time.
With that announcement, the larger of the two said something to the moustachioed gentleman, then raised his opponent's hand a declared that he finally realized the error of his ways, and wasn't doing that again. Moustache had triumphed over all comers, and could be proud to call himself the Chilli Eating Champion of the Czech Republic and claim the 3000 Kc ($140 USD) prize that went with it.
And while the thrill of victory certainly washed over him at that time, I'm sure he wasn't so thrilled when he went to the bathroom the following morning.
As for me, while I am intelligent enough to avoid entering a pain-endurance contest, I was inspired to reach higher on the spice ladder. So I bought a Bhut Jolokia, a.k.a. Ghost Chilli, a.k.a the third hottest chilli pepper in the world.
But that's a story for another day.