The Chili Conundrum

I am encountering problems with the Bhutanese diet. But not the problems you would expect.

Let me preface this by explaining the basic Bhutanese diet to those who aren’t aware of it. Its rice and curries for all meals (the word in Dzongkha for rice is the same as the one for food…this causes whole new problems when the students didn’t see me with a 25 kg bag of rice and passed the word onto their friends, creating the fascinating and frightening rumor that the new English miss doesn’t eat food, and is starving herself here)

And as for the curries…they are primarily chili based. No, not with a lot of chili powder, but chopped up whole chilis (that aren’t deseeded). My friend Zam regularly puts 5-6 chilis in a curry, which is average. Remember, this is for each curry in a day…breakfast, lunch and dinner. The classic Bhutanese dish is called ema datsi, which is a curry of just chilis and cheese. (They also eat a lot of cheese with everything)

This is a small food market outside of a shop in Thimphu. The green things in the basket next to the tomatoes are not beans, but chilis

A common Bhutanese snack is called ezee, and is pretty much like salsa, but again, includes the added ingredient of chilis and seeds. It’s actually pretty good, but you definitely have to aim for the tomato and onion bits until you are used to the chilis.

These are momos, (served daily to the staff of my school at mid-morning break...one of the many perks here) smothered in ezee

Now a little bit about me; as my family and friends will attest, I have never been one to really enjoy spicy food. Don’t get me wrong, I am somewhat of an adventurous eater, and am willing to try anything, but have always gravitated to the minimal spice level of things on the menu. For example, my favorite food is sushi. I am an avid sushi eater…have been since about the start of college. My abilities for sushi eating are amazing and somewhat disturbing; I have been challenged and beaten one of my friends at sushi eating competition twice (completely kicked his ass) and to give you some frame of reference, he is a 6ft 3 inches full grown man. I admit I’m pretty obsessed and will have it at least 2x a week at home. But it was only in the past year that I ever started to add wasabi.

When I found out I was coming to Bhutan, I started to force myself to eat food that was spicier, to try and prepare myself for my diet here. And yes, I took this as a great excuse to go out for sushi and thai food as much as possible (ordering green curry at maximum spice level and adding whole blobs of wasabi to soy sauce with enthusiasm). And as fun as all of my preparations were, I knew deep down that nothing could really prepare me for the Bhutanese cuisine, and I was right.

For the first few weeks, food proved to be the greatest of challenges. I looked at each meal as an obstacle to be overcome- and developed some defensive ways of eating (grabbing more potatoes then chili pieces when eating kewa datsi, and trying to swallow chili pieces whole so I wouldn’t bite into them and spread the hot flavor through my mouth, to give 2 examples). Plus, there was the problem of when you finish anything, the Bhutanese (ever concerned with being good hosts) will harass you to eat more and more. Although I learned and used the polite mannerisms of refusal, it didn’t seem to work as well for me as a chillip as it did for the other Bhutanese I ate with.

Yes, I treated my life like an episode of Man vs. Food, and in many cases it was. But then something strange started to happen when I was a few weeks into my experience here…I started to enjoy the chilies in the dishes. I found myself avoiding them less. By 6 weeks I had started to buy chilies and was experimenting with adding it to my own curries- first 2 chilies a curry and then more and more until I was up to the Bhutanese average of 5-6 chilies per curry (although I deseed mine. I like to try to participate in the cultural norms as much as possible, but we all have our limits)

And then, the strangest and most frightening thing of all happened- I became addicted to the chilies, and found myself unable to make a curry without them. My diet now consists of rice and chili curry for all meals, which leads to the consumption of between 15 and 20 chilis daily. Its terrifying when you think about it, and I am beginning to experience symptoms of what the Bhutanese refer to as “chili overdose” which is when you eat too many and your hands and face start to tingle.

So I am making a conscious effort to reduce the chilies in my diet, although it is much harder then it sounds as I have become so accustomed to it. I suppose there is such a thing as getting too immersed in a culture- and in diet at least, I have had a case of “overadaptation”.

I don’t like to think of what will happen when I return home to a chili-free environment. I have already started to have nightmares of going to whole foods in search of ezee.