A dish that got much, much too spicy

It's worth bearing in mind that, before the Portuguese introduced chili peppers to India (in Goa first but then their use quickly spread to the rest of Asian cooking), the only 'hot' spices available were pepper, ginger, mustard and, possibly, Szechuan pepper. These all contain a chemical related to the heat of chili peppers but not nearly as hot as some chilis! Traditional Danish cooking probably uses only black pepper, ginger and mustard as a 'hot' spice. As in British cooking, spices were expensive and used sparingly if at all (and often only for special occasions) in the dishes of the common folk. Cinnamon and ginger and cloves seem to be three which found their way quite early into Northern Europe. In Italy, the tomato and the chili established themselves quite early. It is difficult to imagine what Italian cooking would be like without the tomato but it was only trusted as an ingredient from the late 16th Century! Before that it was used as a table decoration and thought to be inedible or poisonous! (The Italian name for it means, literally 'Golden Apple' because most tomatoes known then were yellow or orange.)

Thank you for your detailed response. I didn't know that you could add milk or yoghurt, I will try that if it happens again. The tip about testing the recipe first is also very useful. I never did that, I just added the chili that it said in recipe and the dish got far too spicy. Maybe I misunderstood the amounts, I am not sure. I usually like spicy dishes, but I simply couldn't eat that dish and neither could my visitors. Yes, the traditional Danish cooking uses black pepper as a spice, but we don't use chili at all. Compared the food from many other countries the Danish food is not spicy at all, and I think that is a pity.

Thanks for sharing in details. The indian spices are usually strong provided it is pure, the market now is full of adulterated stuff, If i find spices added is too strong, i add yogurt, tamarind paste usually. Some times adding pieces of unboiled potato helps too

I am not sure what went wrong, but neither extra water nor sugar seemed to make much difference. I tasted a small spoonful of the dish, and it was more than enough We had to throw the dish away and order a pizza. My friends joked about it and teased me, but I just laughed about it and never tried that recipe again.

I guess you are not really good at making Indian foods. What about other foods? Can you cook them well? I hope so.

I am good at cooking Italian food, because I have lived in Italy and as part of my job I had to cook Italian food. I learned some nice recipes that way. I am not that good at cooking the local food from my country (Danish food) because I don't like it much. I prefer the food from Southern Europe or from Asia. I don't have much experience with Indian food, I love to eat Indian food, but I don't usually cook it at home.

*Often (sorry had a typo)

Yes, I think that I added too much of some of the spices. There was chili in the dish and also some other spices. I might have misunderstood the recipe or something like that. Thanks for the tip about the tomatos, I will remember that. I don't have much experience with Indian recipes. I love to eat Indian food, but I don't usually cook my own Indian food. I hope that I can learn it in the future because I think that Indian food is very delicioous and it is too expensive to order Indian take-away each time I would like to eat Indian food.

I think that extra water is a good thing to try first I hope that I will be able to avoid similar problems in the future. I will be more careful when I cook spicy food in the future. It is a good thing that you never experienced that situation when cooking for guests. In a situation like that you have to find an alternative solution like take-away food. Fortunately my friends and I still had a great party...and they teased me all night

Hello Zoe. A while back I made a dish that became to spicy and I tried the potato trick because I heard that it worked with too much salt. It didn't work at all. The best thing is to do a lot of tasting when adding hot spices