As I write this, I’m eating, for breakfast, a parfait made with (among other things) close to a tablespoon of cayenne pepper and 11 hearty shakes of 650,000 Scoville unit jolokia pepper hot sauce. (The cayenne pepper hits quick. As soon as it hits the tongue. The jolokia peppers take a bit before the heat starts. So, I like to balance the two.)
Last night I made a 7-layer bean dip also with cayenne and the same hot sauce. The day before that, egg salad with… you guessed it: cayenne and jolokia hot sauce. Most of what I eat, I add really spicy stuff to it.
AMA!
Ha! I don’t feel like I have any deficit in tasting, really. I do love strong flavors other than spicy, though. Bitter, sour, that kind of stuff. I dunno! I suppose it’s possible I’m compensating for some deficit in my gustatory sense.
I mostly ask because chilli is more like an allergic reaction than a flavour. I can handle a good level of heat, but if it’s the level where your lips feel like they’re on fire if they touch the sauce then I definitely can’t taste anything else going on. I mostly just get medium-hot Indian food nowadays.