THE spiciest

Once upon a time there was that curry I made with friends in college where we each added spices unbeknownst to the other, and the roaringly cajun crawfish boil in New Orleans: those HAD been the spiciest memories.

They have been blown out of the....flames as it were. The spiciest thing I ever ate occurred a few towns ago in Thailand. I like to avoid superlatives in my writing, but this is true.

A Papaya Salad.

The papaya is actually a green papaya which has been slivered, and added unto it pounded chilis. Great numbers of them. Buddy Lissy and I had been wanting something fresh and so we pointed and hoped (ordering is by the Point and Hope Method here) and garnered ourselves two bowls of the stuff.

The bowls had a garnish of A Hearty Slab of Raw Cabbage. (why?) Almost a sixth of a head.

Lissy and I carried our bowls to our guesthouse, plunked ourselves on the bed, and eagerly dug in. Shortly thereafter we began taking sharp breaths and laughing in a slightly masochistic manner. We were afire, I tell you. My lips flared into puffy red carcasses around my mouth. Chewing--any movement of the mouth--hurt. We blew our noses and coughed and continued to eat. Lissy flopped on the bed. I paced the room. We opened our mouths and reached our tongues to the fan. I cleared out every single sinus. My mouth pulsated, my sunburn joined in and grew warmer too, my hands began shaking. There was no cooling agent: no rice, no soy milk. I opened the mini-fridge and stuck my head in the freezer section.

But we ate our salads. I herded the approximately 8 long red chilis to the Time Out corner of my bowl, next to that cabbage.

Maybe that cabbage wasn't a garnish after all, maybe it was an indicator that with this hot of a salad you can digest even the most cantancorous of things--namely an offensively large piece of brassica.

It was nearly unbearable. Nearly. Yet what a ride! What sensations! It is truly astonishing that Thai people consume this regularly without consternation; the line at Mr. Papaya's stall was the longest at the market.

(I did not eat the cabbage though)