When I started to talk about food pairing, I knew there was a food I could have not overlooked: chilly pepper.

I have always found chilly pepper way too strong. Even if dosed reasonably, I deemed it invading, not to mention bothering my taste buds. Certainly, the sensitivity to spicy is a personal taste, but even when I was more accustomed to that, I have always found that taste too sharp.

Nevertheless, I must admit that, among spices, chilly pepper is way too important to ignore it. Chilly pepper could be what a flashy pink dress is for fashion: something that doesn’t allow mistakes. If paired wisely, chilly pepper creates wonderful dishes. On the other hand, when paired wrongly, chilly pepper can really ruin your dinner.

I will spare you the nerdy explanation for today :) In the next posts though, I will talk more about chilly pepper, what causes its spiciness and how to quench it, using the proper food pairings.

I leave you folks with this springy amuse-bouche (you know that, during this time of the year, my tolerance to winter plunges and I crave for sun, heat and ocean… :)):

Mini sandwiches of mango, mozzarella and chilly pepper

(Doses for 10-15 sandwiches)

• 1 ripe mango

• 125 g of mozzarella

• 1 tea spoon of dry ground chilly pepper

• extra virgin olive oil to taste

• salt to taste

Peel the mango and slice it. Carve out of the pulp in squares of 0.5 cm in thickness. Carve the mozzarella in the same fashion. Mount the sandwiches by sticking, in the order, mango-mozzarella-mango (if you prefer, you can have mozzarella-mango-mozzarella). Sprinkle with chilly pepper and dress with olive oil and salt.

Fonti

F. Chartier, Taste buds and molecules: the art and science of food and wine, Ed. McClelland and Stewart, 2009