Chili Peppers

Chili peppers add not only heat but flavor to a dish. But when you overindulge, the effect can be uncomfortable, if not painful. The substance that makes you feel as if you're on fire is capsaicin, and tolerance to it varies from one individual to another. There are people who eat hot peppers as if their mouths were asbestos-lined. Others wince in pain at the smallest bite. The more chili peppers you eat over a period of time, the more you become immune to the effects. There are ways, however, to minimize the "hotness" without building up an immunity.

Americans are naive about spices. Uncomfortable when dinner exudes a floral fragrance, and uneducated in the ways of saffron, cardamom and turmeric, we restrict our palates to salt and pepper, punctuated by an occasional parsley sprig or burst of chili. Consequently, we find ourselves in a seasoning gap - wanting more flavor without any idea of how to get it. One of the humbling aspects to an American cook in the pursuit of flavor is the inevitable conclusion that the true experts in this field often are from cultures that are less affluent than ours.

Spicy, flavorful Kung Pao Chicken is coated with a sauce of garlic, ginger, red chili peppers, and soy sauce. Serve it over noodles, symbolic of a long life. Kung Pao Chicken Makes 2 servings 1. Cut chicken into thin slices (about 1/4-inch thick). Mix soy sauce, rice vinegar, red chilies and garlic. Place ginger slices in garlic press and squeeze juice and pulp into sauce. Add chicken and let stand, tossing once or twice. Prepare the noodles. 2. Remove chicken from marinade.

Some say the street merchants have made sidewalks congested and unsightly. The councilman has proposed eliminating 21 vendor locations. When rain hangs in the air and all you want is as nameless as the fog, walk down Eleventh Street where gloves hang from stalls like strung chili peppers, piquins, red and dangerous, where lilies droop spotted tongues over cans of Santa Clara Air Deodorizer, their printed prayers beseeching Do justice at all times for me while essential oils press warm invitations into air that's full of woodsmoke from the oil drums, inviting you to wish for nothing more than lavender and cinnamon, the necessary danger of musk and rose.

Ten years ago, few Americans had ever tasted salsa. Today, many of us, it seems, can't live without it. Once the province of humble Tex-Mex eateries, salsas are turning up at our most respected restaurants and in home kitchens many miles north of the border. Originally made with tomatoes as the main ingredient, salsas today are made from all kinds of fruit - from mangoes to kiwi, melon to pineapple. Salsas also make the perfect accompaniment to grilled meats and seafood, and a fruit salsa is the perfect accompaniment to summer barbecues.

When Saito and Takao Ai moved from Tokyo to Delaware County in the early 1980s, they opened a 30-seat Japanese restaurant in Upper Darby called Asakura Plaza. The initial response was underwhelming. Japanese food was strange and scary to many Philadelphians, who associated it primarily with sushi. The restaurateurs, who spoke almost no English, persevered. They had to: They had moved here with the goal of sending their three young sons - Tony, John and Kenji - to American schools.

In Amanda McCutcheon's Wallingford studio, chili pepper seedlings stretch upward toward heat lamps. Boxes of cassettes, an easel and palettes, and finished paintings lie scattered about the room. Beside getting ready for an exhibit that opens tomorrow at Penn State in Lima, McCutcheon and her fiance, Rob Ferber, have a budding career growing chili peppers and selling them to local restaurants. McCutcheon's first passion is painting, and she hopes to make her living at it someday.

HOT FROM THE OVEN If you're a baker who's interested in making some dough, the City of Philadelphia is looking for you. As part of the ceremonies celebrating the restoration of the City Hall Tower, the city is holding a cake baking and decorating contest on Oct. 3. The theme is "City Hall," and amateurs and professionals alike can enter. Two top winners will get $500 each, and there will be other prizes. To enter by the deadline of next Wednesday, call 546-8862. MORE HOT NEWS Chili peppers burn your fingers and can make you cry and sweat, but still, people come back for more.

Remember when generic white wine was all you knew? You were happy with that - until you tasted a really fabulous vintage, and life got complicated. Then never again could you be satisfied with an undistinguished vino. Chili peppers are like that. If jalapeno - and canned jalapeno at that - is all you know, get ready for a life-altering change. "We as a culture are where we were 30 years ago with wine," says Rosalind Creasy, author of "The Edible Pepper Garden" (Periplus, $14.95)

The inclination is strong to view Friday's Red Hot Chili Peppers show at the Wells Fargo Center through a sports-minded prism. After all, the concert was at the home of Philadelphia's beloved pro basketball and hockey teams. And the Southern California band's first greeting to an estimated 20,000 was a hearty "Congratulations on the Sixers!" from bassist (and known knowledgeable hoops fan) Michael "Flea" Balzary (a Lakers loyalist, of course). The final goodbye came from drummer Chad Smith, last to leave after a satisfying, encore-set-closing instrumental jam: "Sorry about your hockey team — but ‘Go Sixers!

Rule No. 1 about spicy ingredients - you don't need to love spicy foods to love what spicy ingredients can do for the foods you do love. That's because foods such as chili peppers and hot sauces can do way more than simply add mouth-searing heat. Adding just a touch will heighten the other flavors of a dish without adding noticeable spiciness. For example, whip up your favorite mac and cheese. Now stir in just a few drops of hot sauce. Taste. It won't be spicy, but it will be better.

Subject: The goetta city So the NLDS heads back to Cincinnati. You guys ever been there? For a Bengals game? College hoops? A Pete Rose gambling seminar? Subject: The goetta city No. But I had a nightmare about it once.  What's this goetta stuff I keep hearing about? Did they steal our scrapple idea and just rename it? Subject: The goetta city I made an annual college hoops visit to Cincinnati and never heard of goetta, unless that's what they call their signature chili over spaghetti.

Spicy, flavorful Kung Pao Chicken is coated with a sauce of garlic, ginger, red chili peppers, and soy sauce. Serve it over noodles, symbolic of a long life. Kung Pao Chicken Makes 2 servings 1. Cut chicken into thin slices (about 1/4-inch thick). Mix soy sauce, rice vinegar, red chilies and garlic. Place ginger slices in garlic press and squeeze juice and pulp into sauce. Add chicken and let stand, tossing once or twice. Prepare the noodles. 2. Remove chicken from marinade.

Early in the Red Hot Chili Peppers' sold-out show Monday at the Wachovia Center (the first of two nights), singer Anthony Kiedis reminisced about the Peppers' smaller Philadelphia gigs, like the Chestnut Cabaret in 1989 and the Tower Theater in 1991. Having witnessed an unhinged Peppers gig from that era that Kiedis didn't mention - 1990, at the Irvine Auditorium - I can safely say that I never anticipated seeing him in an arena talking about the good old days after having just opened a show with three consecutive hit singles.

When it comes to the double album, that grand gesture in which a band announces that its prodigious creativity cannot be contained by just one shiny silver disc, there's a fine line between boldly ambitious and stupendously indulgent. On Stadium Arcadium (Warner Bros. . 1/2), their first album in four years, the Red Hot Chili Peppers walk that line, carefully. That the quartet - singer Anthony Kiedis, drummer Chad Wilson, guitarist John Frusciante, and bass player Michael "Flea" Balzary - is on a prolific jag, there can be no doubt.

One bite into the chili-strewn dish known as Water Boiled Fish, and your mouth explodes. Your forehead erupts in beads of sweat, eyes water, the nose runs, and the tongue and lips go prickly. Sichuan food isn't just hot and spicy. Some of it is numbing. Hardly anywhere else in China does one encounter such innocent-looking but searing food. Nor can one find a people who eat blisteringly hot food with such gusto. "Our endurance for spicy food is higher than yours," a lunch companion, poet Guan Wuzhao, said out of compassion for a wincing visitor during a culinary visit to this provincial capital.

Some play loose with psychedelia, an often-corny, stoner ideal in which paisley images, purple music, and a mess of gods and drugs met in an epiphany of sensory overload. For Red Hot Chili Peppers and Queens of the Stone Age, who packed the Tweeter beyond capacity Friday, psychedelia was a veil through which they created visionary sound and lyrical witticism. Queens compress a sleek, stoner/art-rock roar, topped by manic guitar solos and B-movie organs, into something like motorcycles revving in your skull.

Of all the myths surrounding the rock-and-roll creative process, the one that least applies to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' acclaimed By the Way comes under the heading "divine inspiration. " "I'm sure people in bands have experienced some kind of superhuman burst of songwriting," guitarist John Frusciante said last month, as he sat in a candlelit trailer on Ellis Island, where the Chili Peppers performed at a concert for families and businesses affected by the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack.