Tried a dish of some type of spinach (unimportant). It started spicy hot, crescendoed much hotter, then the heat went away. All in a few seconds. Why?

Hot spinachy. Spicy to extreme heat to completely dissipating in a few seconds. The restaurant would not devulge their secret. The only time in my life I experienced a dish like that.
Can you tell me how it's done? A recjpe perhaps? Thank you.

Walter Buchko
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6 Comments

amysarah
amysarah February 23, 2016
Intriguing. I don't think the type of dish is unimportant - Indian, Thai, Latin American, etc. - and/or preparation - might point towards the source of this heat.
 
HalfPint
HalfPint February 23, 2016
Might not even be peppers. Could be horseradish, wasabi (the real stuff) or maybe even mustard oil
 
HalfPint
HalfPint February 23, 2016
From your description, it almost sounds like it was wasabi leaves, at least partly.
 
sexyLAMBCHOPx
sexyLAMBCHOPx February 23, 2016
What type of cuisine/ethnicity? That could give you a clue.
 
hardlikearmour
hardlikearmour February 23, 2016
Maybe this was the pepper they used? http://www.pepperscale.com/chiltepin-pepper/
 
702551
702551 February 23, 2016
Probably the particular pepper that they selected to include in the dish. There are hundreds and hundreds of pepper varieties and most of them aren't actively cultivated here in the USA. Each cultivar is bred to showcase a number of desirable characteristics and whoever bred these peppers probably wanted that specific behavior that you experienced.

Unless you are some pepper expert or unless you encountered it yourself and the cook divulged the ingredient, you might be able to hazard a guess but there are likely dozens of peppers that exhibit that type of heat behavior.
 
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