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From: das@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.cooks
Subject: Re: How hot is HOT?
Message-ID: <632@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 1-Aug-84 14:54:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.632
Posted: Wed Aug  1 14:54:36 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Aug-84 02:37:07 EDT
References: <3920@tekecs.UUCP> <259@hercules.UUCP>
Organization: UCLA CS Dept.
Lines: 25

...
Water, tea, Coke?  I've always found rice to be a fine tongue-cooler.

On a related note -- when you go to, say, an Indian restaurant you've never
been to before, especially in a city you're visiting where you suspect there
is only a tiny Indian community (in my case, visiting Cincinnati from L.A.),
how do you specify the degree of hotness you prefer?  After ordering the
lamb vindaloo at Khyber in Cincinnati (fine restaurant, by the way), it
occurred to me that they might tone it down for non-Indians, so I asked my
waiter (blond Cincinnati native):  "How hot do you make it?".  His reply,
was "Oh, don't worry, it's not too hot."  "No, I like it hot.  How can I
describe how hot?"  "How about a scale of 1 - 20?  10 is how we normally
make it.  Maybe you want it 12, say?"  "Well, for a vindaloo, maybe 16 or
17 would be right."  [I was cautious, since I didn't want to err on the hot
side.]  It turned out to be what I would call medium, very weak kick to it.
There's got to be a better way.

I haven't tried this thought yet, but what I should have done is asked for
tiny samples of various chutneys of different degrees of hotness, tried
them, and said "This one is about right."  [I'm ruling out the solution of
just adding that chutney once the dish is served, since it may have other
flavors I don't particularly want.]

Other ideas, especially for cuisines where you don't normally have a large
selection of condiments to serve as a scale?