SpiceLines

Peppery chai turns dreamy with the addition of a few drops of rosewater. Rose and
vanilla have a special affinity, so include a piece of the bean in your spice blend.

Alicia and I have a standing date once a year, right around Valentine’s Day.

It’s complicated. We don leather gauntlets and surgical gloves, hone our razor sharp blades and unfurl balls of sturdy twine.

Is your imagination running wild?

Never mind. We’re just preparing to prune the roses.

The Dorset Naga, a chili from Bangladesh, has a Scoville rating
of more 1.6 million units, making it the world's hottest chili.
Photo credit: Really Cool Seeds

I confess. I am a chile addict. And I’m not interested in any 12-step program.

I grew up eating the holy trinity of Texas chiles: Spicy pickled jalapenos, fiery green serranos, and mellow poblanos, usually stuffed, battered and fried till golden. And a fourth: Tiny red chiles pequins, the size of a baby’s fingernail, most memorably hidden like incendiary land mines in my grandmother’s Thanksgiving oyster dressing.

I eat them all, at least one or two everyday. But these peppers are kid stuff compared to the Dorset Naga.

Creamy rice pudding, scented with rosewater and flecked with cardamom, is
a favorite dessert in both Iraq and Iran. According to Persian legend, it was
"the food of the angels, first made in heaven."

The warring Assyrians ate roses. Or did they?

In 879 BC Assurnasirpal II, the self styled “great king, mighty king, king of the universe,” celebrated the reconstruction, by slave labor, of the city of Kalku or Nimrud with a party for 69,574 of his closest friends. In The Oldest Cuisine in the World, Jean Bottero calls it the “most famous, the most fabulous, the most Pantagruelian” feast ever held in ancient Mesopotamia.

It may also have been the original teardown party. Assurnasipal’s monumental new palace reportedly covered 900 acres and included magnificent bas relief carvings and statuary. One of the most brutal of Assyrian rulers, the warrior monarch was not shy about trumpeting his virtues. Inscribed on a statue in the temple of Ishtar were these words, among others: “I am a hero, I am a lion, I am virile….”

But let’s get to the roses.