Something happened Thursday. Todd and I went to Kabana for lunch, which is (currently, just about) my favorite restaurant ever. The food is always very adequately spiced there, often producing sweat and glowing sensations. It’s greasy homestyle Pakistani, with mustard greens and radioactive ghee, littered with fresh peppers.
The waiter at Kabana is the best. Whenever he spies Todd and his flowing, horse-lord ringlets he gets so excited, ambles up to our table with wide eyes to say, “Ahh!! My friend, have you been practicing?” Todd shifts in his seat as his eyes turn to defensive slits. He responds glumly, “No, not enough. How about yourself?”
Thursday I upsetted a precedent: I requested our food spicy. Todd blinked, “Spicy? Whaaa?” I grinned. “We’re getting our comeuppance!”
Yeah, we were in for it, or so we thought. But then the food came and after we’d each had a baby bite we shared the same conclusion: normal Kabana. Regular old regular, spicy yes, but not SPICY.
This threw everything out of wack. The bounds of the world had changed. We’d spent ten minutes waiting for our cheeks to burn, building hope and glee. And then when they didn’t the world became so boring; we’d boarded the rollercoaster, summited the first rise, and nothing happened.
I spent a few days trying to adjust. Friday night before the show I hastily created a quesadilla with so much hot sauce that the peppers vaporized, went airborne to create a toxic event in my kitchen. This wasn’t enough. Later that night I ate a burro at Cancun, dumped the whole styrofoam of salsa verde on my food, full of raw jalapeno like shards of broken glass, but it was no good. I was still waiting for my comeuppance.
It wasn’t until Sunday that I got what was coming to me. I made a green quasi-Thai curry with a fresh Farmer’s Market habanero. I used a plastic bag to handle the pepper as I was processing but it was not enough; before I’d tasted anything my fingertips were burning. The pepper itself was like a wrinkled garnet, the bottom half dense and folded like it was getting ready for a growth spurt. When the minced bonnet hit the browning onions it was like a thermal detonator; the air in my kitchen grew lethal, I started coughing, ran into the bathroom to flush with water.
The entree itself wasn’t 5/5 stars spicy; it was about four. But it was enough that I had to stop for a long break 2/3 through. The brown rice and broccoli drank up the habanero, dulled it with their earth, but the pepper won. The orange ember rocked my world, and everything came back to normal.
