Some Like It Hot: Spicy Favorites from the World's Hot Zones [Hardcover]

Clifford A. Wright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2005

If you are one of those spicy-food lovers who constantly strives to test your heat capacity -- or if you're just one of those people who really appreciates the nuances of piquant cuisines, this fun and feisty collection of recipes is for you. Author Cliff Wright has followed the equator in search of authentically spicy dishes, and he recreates them here with Meat-Stuffed Chiles from Peru, Chile Verde from New Mexico, "Tablecloth Stainer" from Oaxaca, Egusi Soup from Nigeria, "Sauce that Dances" from Algeria, Hot and Sour Shrimp Soup from Thailand, "Ants Climbing a Tree" from China, and about 300 more deliciously fiery foods. Each recipe has a heat index, so you know what's going to be subtly spicy and what's truly incendiary. If you are looking for that next "hot" thing, this is where you'll find it.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Americans' newfound passion for chili peppers knows no bounds. Whether this obsession originated with the Cajuns, Mexican immigrants, or the advent of Szechuan restaurants is a moot point. Kitchens that used to have nothing hotter than a decades-old tiny bottle of Tabasco now overflow with bird peppers from Thailand, Scotch bonnets from Jamaica, and the ubiquitous jalapeno. Wright's assembly of recipes calling for hot peppers originates from tropical countries, but there are some exceptions to that rule. He inventories Oaxacan mole, Korean kimchi, Thai curries, Louisiana gumbo, Jamaican jerk, Texan chili con carne, African piri-piri, and Bengali fish stew. In addition to familiar dishes such as enchiladas, he offers such classics as Chinese Ants Climbing a Tree. Wright moderates all these searing specialties with neutral dishes such as peas and rice, lentil dal, green rice, chutney, and cabbage salad, all calculated to foil peppers' numbing heat. He also addresses the best beverages to accompany chili-infused cooking. Devotees of spicy cooking will enjoy every fiery mouthful. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

A wonderful collection of hot and spicy dishes from . . . around the world . . . A must-have book. -- Gourmet Retailer

Wright is as multiculturally-minded as ever . . . Globe-trotting recipes that will sear your palate. -- Boston Globe

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Common Press (October 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155832268X
• ISBN-13: 978-1558322684
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,009,374 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Clifford A. Wright is a cook, food writer, and independent research scholar who won the James Beard/KitchenAid Cookbook of the Year award and the James Beard Award for the Best Writing on Food in 2000 for A Mediterranean Feast (William Morrow). His book A Mediterranean Feast was also a finalist for the cookbook of the year award given by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. He is the author of fourteen other books, twelve of which are cookbooks, including his latest The Best Soups in the World (Wiley, 2010). Colman Andrews, former editor of Saveur magazine called Wright 'the reigning English-speaking expert on the cuisines and culinary culture of the Mediterranean--the real Mediterranean, the whole Mediterranean.' Clifford writes regularly for Saveur, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Fine Cooking, and Food and Wine and wrote all the food entries for Columbia University's Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East. Clifford has also lectured on food at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Georgetown University, and the Culinary Institute of America among other universities and venues. As a cooking teacher he has taught cooking classes at the Rhode Island School of Design, Sur la Table, Central Market in Texas and other cooking schools around the United States and Italy.
Before writing about food, Clifford was a foreign policy researcher at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., a Staff Fellow at the Institute of Arab Studies, Belmont, MA, the Executive Director of the American Middle East Peace Research Institute, Cambridge, MA and the publisher of Raising Kids, a child development newsletter for parents. He was written two books on the politics and history in the Middle East.
You can visit him at www.cliffordawright.com and read his food writing at www.zesterdaily.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read and Hot Recipes. Buy It!, October 18, 2005

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Some Like It Hot: Spicy Favorites From The World's Hot Zones (Paperback)

`Some Like It Hot' by noted culinary writer, Clifford A. Wright is a real gem. I was surprised to find such a book written by Wright, who is one of the leading scholarly experts on food of the Mediterranean, and, as he so elegantly illustrates himself, the Mediterranean is hot a hotbed of spicy foods.

Therefore, Wright's primary focus is on the various world spicy cuisines. He identifies the following centers of spicy food culture:

Western South America, primarily Peru and Bolivia.

Mexico and Southwestern U.S.

Cajun Cuisine

Jamaica

Western coast of Africa, primarily Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, and Nigeria

North Africa (the Madgreb) of Algeria and Tunesia

Eastern Africa, especially Ethopia

Yemen

India and Pakistan

Thailand

Sichuan and Hunan provinces in China

Korea

These cuisines are discussed in detail in sidebars scattered throughout the recipe chapters.

The very odd thing about this list is how widely separate these regions are, especially since the single plant genus, the chile, grows so easily in all sorts of tropical, subtropical, and temperate climates. I am quite happy to see Wright confirm a hunch I had about capsicum genus (composed of five different species from the very mild bell pepper to the thermonuclear Habanero) that it's arrival in Europe and Asia simply blew away all piquant competion by its being so much stronger and so cheap to grow.

The most important `academic' study Wright covers is why some groups of people like hot food. He reviews and dismisses fourteen different common and not so common hypotheses, reaching the one that simply says people like the way they taste. What Wright does not do is explain why these particular regions embraced hot food and so many other regions did not. Why, for example, is Spanish cuisine so in love with the sweet bell pepper (capsicum annuum) which came from Mexico (note all those red pimentos, which are pickled sweet peppers) yet they do not embrace the chiles with high heat. It is easy to understand South America, Mexico, and Jamaica, as genus capsicum is native to these lands. It is also easy to understand India and Pakistan and Sichuan and Hunan, as both cuisines have a history of creating spicy dishes based on the pre-chile spices of black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, galangal, and tamarind. But what about the west coast of Africa, Ethopia, and Yemen? Wright never gets around to answering this question, but we quickly loose interest in the academic questions when the Professor gets down to the recipes.

While Wright claims to not be a chile head, he cannot escape the fact that the capsicum chile is by far the strongest source of culinary heat. Therefore, virtually all recipes include one or more varieties of chile in the ingredients.

The recipes are all organized by type of dish, with chapters on:

Startling Starters

Sexy Salads

Searing Soups

Electrifying Eggs

Hot Chicks, Wicked Ducks, and One Killer Rabbit (with apologies to Monty Python)

Blazing Beef and Indendiary Lamb

Piquant Pork

Sassy Seafoof

Volatile Vegetables

Pizzazz Pasta, Napalm Noodles, and Fiery Rice

Hot Accompaniments

Cool Accompaniments

Basic Sauces, Pastes, and Seasonings

Within each chapter, recipes are organized by location, following the same geographical order laid out above, always beginning with the New World source of chiles. And, not all cuisines are represented in all chapters.

In these recipes, Wright has done some adaptation to American kitchens and markets, but not much. That means that like just about any good survey of a regional cuisine (other than one native to North America), you will have to do a little culinary spelunking to locate some of the more important ingredients. And, since the books covers many cuisines from around the world, this means you will be stocking up on a LOT of esoteric ingredients to do these recipes. This is not only various kinds of chile, but also special sausages, fats, pastes, and sauces. Wright suggests some substitutions, but also confesses that most substitutions simply cannot give you the flavor of the original. It also means you will be doing a lot of cooking with animal fats such as lard and duck fat.In addition to being very close to authentic, all recipes are described with exceptional care.

To handle this problem, Wright provides two very important tools. The first is his last chapter of recipes for `Basic Sauces, Pastes, and Seasonings'. The second is one of the longest listings of Internet sources I have yet seen, including the great section in Paula Wolfert's exceptional book on the cooking or southwestern France.

Like Wolfert's book, this book is worth it even if you do nothing more than read it and pick out just those few recipes for which you can find ingredients easily. But, if you love your heat, you will really want to explore some of the more esoteric dishes, simply to get the different flavors from the many different varieties of chiles and the sauces and pastes into which they are made.

If you like hot food, this book is a must. If you are simply a foodie, this book is a must read, as Wright rarely missteps in his analysis of culinary matters.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My 'book of the month'.......period!, December 15, 2005

By 

SpicyDoc "Rob" (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Some Like It Hot: Spicy Favorites from the World's Hot Zones (Hardcover)

It might even be my book of the year. This is the book for spice lovers and 'chile-heads' who want a truly GLOBAL appreciation of their passion. The recipes I've tried are superb and easy to follow. More importantly, the anecdotes, sidebars, historical notes, and especially the internet listings are indispensible to fully appreciating the beauty of spiced cuisine. I never dreamed I would be making my own HARISA (it's fairly easy) and applying it to homemade Algerian dishes.

Thankyou Clifford! BTW this is my first book review hence the handle :)

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Piquant Passion, July 29, 2006

By 

Heather J. (Worcester, MA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Some Like It Hot: Spicy Favorites From The World's Hot Zones (Paperback)

Simply put this book is our house Bible. We're Anglos with a hunger for hot & spicy food. We have our local library to thank for showing us this tremendous guide. Originally borrowed, it soon became apparent that we must own the book to truly benefit from it. It's both a pleasure to read about the history and science behind these spicy foods and to learn how to prepare them.

Once you get the ingredients from your supermarket's ethnic section, local ethnic markets, or online most dishes can be made in about 1/2 - 1 hour. Some are even easier than that and all pack a colossal flavor.

One of the books best features is the 1 - 5 spice rating scale, cleverly noted above each recipe. Don't be afraid to try a recipe rated 5. This is usually given because it calls for some ridiculous amount of peppers, which can be halved or quartered. If you find you like the dish and can handle more spice, you can up the (pic-)ante the next time you make it.

There are a few recipes that I find daunting (i.e. Dora Wat). I want to make them but am turned off by the fact that I have to make specialty spice combinations (i.e. niter kebbeh or berbere) in advance. While the author gives suggestions for substitutions I'd prefer the real thing or nothing at all. One of these days, I'll get around to doing the pre-work and have a reserve of the stuff on hand.

Note: Fans of Sichuan must have this book. It makes Sichuan cooking easy and the creative cook can make it healthy by minimizing the amount of oil used.

WARNING!

If you are new to cooking with chilies, take extra CARE. I always wear gloves when handling chilies. Perhaps a real chef with chew me out for this but there's nothing worse than discovering you have pepper juice on your finger and rub your eye.

Finally, I just can't say enough great things about this book. It's a jewel for cooks the world over!