Customer Reviews

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

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`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.

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 :)

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!

I'm far from tabloid or Google-search notoriety, but my friends know that I have a scandalous reputation for a tough love of chiles. I've studied them, grown them, and cook up a storm with them. I have a warning sign posted on my door, and the folks who are brave enough to cross my shameful threshold are guaranteed a unique and delicious meal. I prided myself in being a hot food expert ... until I found "Some Like It Hot", by Clifford A. Wright.
How can one man, who is apparently also an authority on many other subjects (James Beard Cookbook of the Year Award winner for his A Mediterranean Feast and author of 11 other cookbooks) find the time to become a better chile expert than I? Well, I don't know the answer to how ... but he has.
You tap into the spicy vein of the world with this book. Mr. Wright's charming and informative introductions to each recipe are vivid travel logs ... including history and serving suggestions. I found the whimsical HOTNESS Scale to be very helpful in choosing my dinner guests (Piquant, Incendiary, Blistering, Molten, and Thermonuclear).
A few of Clifford's recipes include authentic ingredients, and could be challenging for the average American palate, and although I can't say I loved them all, I enjoyed the experience ... similar to how I felt about my first (and last) bungee jump. Stimulating and exhilarating!
The recipes I DO love include: a very satisfying Pumpkin Stew with Chiles and Cheese (Incendiary), the tangy Mango Rice (Blistering), rich and luscious Chicken in Green Coconut Sauce (Thermonuclear), and the feisty Spicy Shrimp with Aji Sauce (Molten).
Some Like It Hot includes a good selection of vegetarian dishes, as well as a section filled with Cool Accompaniments.
I strongly recommend this book, certainly for my fellow chile heads out there, but also for meat-and-potato sector. Mr. Wright guides the "tender mouths" very gently. He notes that you "... can no more plunge into chile-hot food than you can a swimming pool without knowing how to swim. You must start slowly and build up your tolerance for hot foods."
Of course ... I didn't bother with that advice. I jumped right in, and so glad I did ... but, I'm an expert, remember?

Mr. Wright shows us not only that he can create many blistering and mouthwatering recipes, but that he has also done the research to perfect them. While some recipes are so hot one needs to build up to them, each recipe is so tasty and delicious you don't really mind the sniffling nose and tearing eyes! Mr. Wright clearly knows much about the many different cuisines he explores. This book is a joy to read and its amazing recipes never cease to impress.

I purchased this book as a part of a spicy foods gift basket for a couple that loves all things spicy. This book seemed really interesting, because it divides stories and recipes by regions of the world and gives you a global perspective on spicy foods.

I am a lover of hot and spicy foods but my one rule is the food has to taste good. If it tastes good I don t care how hot it is I will want to keep eating, the converse of course does not work. All heat and no flavor is terrible. The books accomplishes half the equation. It has some incredibly tasty recipes but they are not hot. My girlfriend and I began with a mid level (according to the books own rankings) recipe to see how the scale compared and it had no piquant aspects at all. Inspired by the taste but looking for heat we immediately went up to what was supposed to be one of the hottest recipes in the book only to be disappointed again. We have cooked a few other recipes but we either go in not expecting heat or intentionally adding many more peppers or raddish or whatever is appropriate for the recipe. Additionally some of these recipes are very exotic and require rare/expensive ingredients.

We ordered the book thinking it would show some wear and tear. It came in excellent condition. In fact you couldn't tell that it was a used book.