$28 for One Appetizer, Two Entrees, One Naan, and Two Lassi or Soft Drinks at Punjabi Tadka ($51.96 Value)
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Takes ReservationsIndian classics from chicken curry to chana masala are tempered by sweet, cool mango lassi
The Deal
$28 for an Indian meal for two ($51.96 value)
- One appetizer
- Two entrees
- One naan
- Two lassi or soft drinks
Chili Peppers: The Globalization of Flavor
Today’s culinary landscape is incredibly diverse, but many of the dishes we’ve come to love are linked by one bold flavor: chili peppers. Before biting into a spicy dish, grab a glass of milk and check out Groupon’s guide.
Although today chili peppers add palatable heat to everything from Thai stir-fries to Indian vindaloos, the fiery fruits first found their place in the culinary canon in South America. Since roughly 7500 BC, humans have been mixing wild varieties into their food, beginning controlled cultivation a few millennia later. It was Columbus himself who named them “red peppers,” for he believed they were related to black peppercorn, just as he believed he had landed in India on the back of a unicorn. On his return to Europe, he brought the plants with him, completing the first step in a worldwide gastronomic revolution.
When most people think chilies, they think fire. That heat, which piques the mouth’s pain receptors instead of the taste buds, comes from capsaicin, a powerful alkaloid that forms in glands in the peppers’ inner membranes. But not all chilies sear the palate. The term properly refers to all members of the genus Capsicum, which includes fruits at every point along the Scoville scale, the index used to measure perceived heat. Bell peppers have 0 Scoville heat units, whereas Trinidad Scorpions, whereas Carolina Reapers, for the moment the hottest peppers on the planet, have a mean heat of more than 2.2 million Scoville heat units—more than 24 times the average habanero. Australian Geographic reported in 2011 that its developers had to wear chemical masks and full protective gear when simmering the Butch T variety into hot sauce. In the mouth, the heat can be chased away with a simple drink of milk or the head of a chocolate bunny—since capsaicin is an oily compound, water doesn’t do much to wash it away, but the oils found in dairy products can help.