Cayenne (chili)

“Lucky and unlucky food. Among the Roma of the 2025 study, baxtale foods (black pepper, garlic, chilli, pickled vegetables) are "sources of strength and resilience, symbolising good fortune and purity", bibaxt foods are impure and bring bad luck, and "the idea of contaminating food is seen as a serious offence, as it can affect both the physical and moral health of the family". Orthodox Roma families dye Easter eggs red with red onion or purple cabbage, and česnica bread "was never missing", even "during the last war". Meaning and belonging at the table.”

“Hot: chilli (pungent), whether served hot or cold. Deep-fried and baked food, food cooked at high heat. Alcohol, rice wine included. Red meat and innards.”

“The idea. The kitchen is the first pharmacy. Chinese food therapy looks at what a food is believed to do inside the body: warm it, cool it, moisten it, dry it. Not at how hot it is on the plate: chilli is hot even when it is served cold, ice cream is cold on the warmest day. Each food also carries one of five flavours, each flavour belongs to an organ system, and the cook adjusts the menu to the season, the climate and the person. A centuries-old, coherent way of seeing food, alive in Chinese kitchens to this day, with official standing in China.”

“Buttermilk (moru, takra, chaas). Thin, salted, often with ginger, curry leaves, a green chilli or a pinch of hing, drunk at the end of the meal. Charaka keeps curd off the daily list, but thin buttermilk is something else in the household and in the books: the old Bhavaprakasha even sorts buttermilk by how much water is added. People quote "na takrasevi vyathate kadacit", one who takes buttermilk is never troubled, and it is the title of an old Ayurveda article, but she has never found the verse herself and says so. "Every lunch in my house ends with moru. That I can promise you."”

“What it is. Yoghurt churned with plenty of water, thin, salted, with ginger, curry leaves, a green chilli, sometimes a pinch of hing or a few shallots. Spiced, it is sambaram, the drink of hot afternoons. Moru comes at the end of lunch and at the very end of the sadya, "the final cooling note of the meal".”