Way back when, I had a co-worker from Bangalore who shared some chicken with us for lunch one day (I don’t remember the specific recipe, but would guess it had marinated in yogurt & a generous amount of capsicum). For context, even after several years in Austin, I’d order milk with dinner to cut the spiciness of Tex-Mex (enchiladas rojas? C’mon…). So at that point, this chicken was the hottest/spiciest food I had ever eaten. The chicken was indeed delicious, but all of us not-South-Asians were mopping the sweat from our upper lip etc. And yet she said she had really dialed it down for us, & that her husband would’ve complained that it was too bland. At the same time, I think that one luncheon kicked open the door, for me, & since then I will usually go for the spicy number.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that my wife’s Ethiopian (we 1st met about a year after that lunch) - sometimes we will go visit a family & they’ll have all this injera & wat spread out, but also (for example) a lasagna because the well-meaning hosts were afraid that I didn’t like, or couldn’t handle, the cuisine.
Other guys too. When I was in Malaysia, a taxi driver was astonished that I could handle - never mind enjoy - eggs sambal for breakfast. It’s boiled eggs, topped with a delightful chili / vinegar / garlic sauce, served over rice. He thought it was much too spicy for any meal before dinnertime. I don’t consider myself tough about spices at all, so this was surprising.
At the other extreme, a Thai friend told me - when I looked in astonishment as he heaped sliced chili into his already-searing soup - “Don’t worry; even Thai people think I’m weird.”
(a) Like Ben Shapiro, a right-wing provocateur, liar, and vaginal dessicant on Daily Wire who knows more than most historians and scientists despite having no education beyond high school; who wants to return the US to the Catholic theocracy it never was.
(b) An online entity who’s managed to make a career of:
MATT WALSH: [some cringey, stupid reactionary bullshit]
SOMEONE ELSE: “Wow, that’s some cringey, stupid reactionary bullshit!”
MATT WALSH: “TRIGGERED!”
(c) Someone you should treat with the respect he deserves:
Oh I dunno, I have some friends who have definitely tapered down their spicy food intake, due to getting older and having delicate gastrointestinal issues. One of them is a Texan whose early life definitely included eating chiles in foods common in most parts of Texas.
Time is cruel, this way. Sometimes.
ETA:
If Walz was cooking that recipe for other people (for potluck etc.) then I totally get it about making the recipe to-the-letter, chiles and all, and then not eating much of it himself. Cooking for other people is just not the same as cooking for oneself.
A long standing tradition here at World HQ is an Orphans Thanskiving, for anyone with nowhere else to be. Because the first year, it was a spur of the moment thing, the only store open in my neighborhood was the local tienda/bodega. That year, and most years since, I now make Thanksgiving tacos. The first year, they were fairly “traditional”. As the years go by, I’ve found a lot of ways to incorporate a Thanskgiving twist. Brace yourself for the whitest white person taco you’ve ever had:
The Green Bean Casserole Taco.
Take fresh green beans, shiitake mushrooms, onions and garlic. Run them through the mandolin to slice them very thin. Toss with salt and pepper and sautee with a splash of oil.
Serve on a white flour tortilla, top with a cheesy bechamel.
Garnish with shredded cabbage and french-fried onions.
It’s an absolute travesty of a taco, and a bite of Midwestern comfort food that people come back for every damn year 
Your friend probably had a banana allergy.
… the internet is full of conservative Catholics reassuring each other that Ben Shapiro is still going to Hell
That’s okay. The Wilks Brothers, Shapiro’s backers, probably believes that they’re all going to Hell too.
Yeah, one of the places I used to frequent listed 1-4 stars, and “Korean hot.”
That actually sounds pretty damn good!
I don’t eat tacos because this is the UK and they’re very hard to find.
I once made a chili so hot it burned up my Eustachian tubes. Does that qualify me to criticise Walz’s tacos?
In related opinion, someone should write some bots to make fun of everything on Xitter. It’s time the reeking edifice was topped.
If you ever get a chance to make your own tortillas (it’s not that hard, I promise1, 2), consider subbing 1/4 to 1/3 of the total white flour measure for potato flour. Or just add some Potato Buds® or even part of a baked/boiled potato to the tortilla recipe. It’ll give your recipe a bit of an earthy, potato-y flavor, and the white-wheat-flour will still have plenty of gluten to keep the tortilla properly glued together.
There’s a barbecue joint in central Texas that uses half-white-flour, half-masa-harina (corn flour [not cornmeal!]) in its tortillas. It’s pretty good too.
Well done! The green-bean-casserole-with-Durkee’s-fried-onions taco is kinda brilliant. Maybe the only thing missing the pound of salted butter, which is in practically everything in the Midwest.
- Improvised tortilla press using a plastic bag, and/or a pie plate or two:
- Bake your tortillas on a dry cast iron skillet, or a dry cookie sheet, on the stove.
In our house, mayo is one of the 4 basic food groups. We are haole as F.
*I still like moco loco, laulau and squid luau, though.
I’ve made both corn and flour tortillas at home, but the GBCT calls for the softest, whitebread type tortilla you can buy. Like if you ran wonderbread through a pasta maker
Ooooh man, Full Midwestern!
Nailed it!
I was shocked how easy it is once I saw how my inlaws make them. If you can make pancakes from a box mix, you can make tortillas from Maseca, it’s pretty much the same idea except for the making balls and smashing them flat.
There’s a wartime factory in Pittsburg that got forgotten after the end of the war. They were turning out mannequins of German soldiers for use on the rifle ranges. One of the mannequins became sentient and turned the deserted factory into producing thousands of replicas of its sentient self. They now wreak revenge on the USA and, given the political leanings of the prototype, they are bent on destroying all that is good in humanity. They obey the whims and fancies of their God Emperor, Don “The John” Trump.
Maseca is the go-to for home tortilla making, here at casa jefe. great for tamales, too!
@Piraat , what is GBCT? i get Green Bay Community Theater - which, i suppose is midwest(?) but, your description of “wonderbread through a pasta maker” made me spit my drink out my nose!
edit: tyops
And then they came for the Doritos.
