I have travelled to India a few times and the food wasn’t spicer than what I could get here in Kansas.
After some discovery I learned that we use the word spicy differently (although South India Andhra style was a bit hotter).
I was used to using the word spicy to mean the heat level of the food, kinda like a measure of capsaicin. This is how I see Americans use the word.
They were largely using spicy to refer to the volume off spices in a dish, kinda like a measure of “strength of flavor”. This is how I saw various cultures in India use the word.
Those things are often related, but are different in meaningful ways that result in these tropes.
Yup the word hot is used to specify the heat level, spicy just means it uses various spices in it, which could include stuff like cinnamon or cardamom etc which don’t add heat but impart flavor and aroma
That’s a very good point, a lot of spices (and herbs) have strong flavors, even some "hot"ness, but little or no capsaicin. As a person who has a bad reaction to capsaicin (Even a moderate amount causes my hæmorrhoids to hæmorrhage for days. And yet, less applicable to Indian food, I can have all the wasabi/horseradish all day) but loves the other strong flavours of Indian food I would politely ask the waiter or chef to leave out the chilies and go easy on the ginger, but let loose on everything else they want: fenugreek, curry-leaf, asafœtida, aniseed, garlic, cardamom, coriander, black pepper and all the “secret spices” that make up their signature flavour.
And I would try to pick dishes where the base is something else and the chilies are added later, because they aren’t going to want to start from scratch, they can’t exactly un-marinate that chicken.
Mexican food is a little more challenging because chilies are the heart of it and often the first ingredient.
I have travelled to India a few times and the food wasn’t spicer than what I could get here in Kansas.
After some discovery I learned that we use the word spicy differently (although South India Andhra style was a bit hotter).
I was used to using the word spicy to mean the heat level of the food, kinda like a measure of capsaicin. This is how I see Americans use the word.
They were largely using spicy to refer to the volume off spices in a dish, kinda like a measure of “strength of flavor”. This is how I saw various cultures in India use the word.
Those things are often related, but are different in meaningful ways that result in these tropes.
Yup the word hot is used to specify the heat level, spicy just means it uses various spices in it, which could include stuff like cinnamon or cardamom etc which don’t add heat but impart flavor and aroma
That’s a very good point, a lot of spices (and herbs) have strong flavors, even some "hot"ness, but little or no capsaicin. As a person who has a bad reaction to capsaicin (Even a moderate amount causes my hæmorrhoids to hæmorrhage for days. And yet, less applicable to Indian food, I can have all the wasabi/horseradish all day) but loves the other strong flavours of Indian food I would politely ask the waiter or chef to leave out the chilies and go easy on the ginger, but let loose on everything else they want: fenugreek, curry-leaf, asafœtida, aniseed, garlic, cardamom, coriander, black pepper and all the “secret spices” that make up their signature flavour.
And I would try to pick dishes where the base is something else and the chilies are added later, because they aren’t going to want to start from scratch, they can’t exactly un-marinate that chicken.
Mexican food is a little more challenging because chilies are the heart of it and often the first ingredient.
Spicy like a spiced wine.