heatstories

Yunnan is China's most diverse province, in biodiversity and culture/peoples - and Georgia Freedman learned about it from the tropical South to the mountains of the north - and east, and west. We talk about how she got to Yunnan in the first place, what it was like to find out more about local cooking - and so much more, not least about the chilli!

Did you know that Zanthoxylum species (which include the Sichuan peppers) grow in the US Midwest - and would you believe that there are ones with potential for fine dining, used like the Japanese kinome? Is expensive wine the real reason fine dining does not do spicy foods?

This conversation was very focused and ranged far, at the same time. And it provided a different perspective, from a forager and chef trained in high culinary skill!

Paul Rozin is the psychologist of chile pepper lovers - there's no getting around his hypothesis of why we humans, uniquely among animals, develop a craving for the spiciness of hot chilli pepper: "benign masochism"!

The Himalayas seem like a major barrier, but lots of trade and cultural interaction took place across these mountains. Jeff Fuchs traveled on the Ancient Tea Horse Road with some of the last Himalayan muleteers... and chilli seems to have traveled along these trade routes. Thus, we got to talking...