REACH FOR THE RED
As with pretty much all fruit and veg,
the evidence shows that the brighter
their colour, the more phytonutrients
capsicums contain. This means that
ripe red capsicums can boast as much
as five times the polyphenols and
carotenes of the immature green kind,
with the fruit also accumulating tasty
sugars and aroma compounds as they
redden. What a deal. What about
yellow and orange ones? These are just
cultivars that naturally accumulate
fewer carotene pigments, meaning they
never turn quite as red (or nutrient
dense) as the others.
ROAST BEETS RAW
Good news! As with other crops rich
in carotenes (think tomatoes and
carrots), most studies suggest that
cooking improves the polyphenol
content of capsicums by as much as
twice their raw content. And the food
science geeks have gone one step
further, investigating the impact of
different cooking techniques on the
nutritional content of chillies and
capsicums, from boiling (who on
earth boils capsicums?), to steaming,
grilling, roasting, stir-frying and
microwaving. As usual, dry-heat
cooking methods retain most nutrients
by not only preventing the leaching
of nutrients into cooking water, but
also concentrating levels of the good
stuff in the veg as it cooks down. When
you concentrate phytonutrients, you
conveniently also concentrate sugars,
acids and aroma compounds, making
for tastier results, so go for baked,
roasted and grilled every time.
DON’T BIN THE
WHITE STUFF
You know that white spongy tissue on
the inside of chillies and capsicums?
The stuff around the seeds that’s a
fiddle to remove? Well don’t! Not
only will you instantly dispense with
a chore, but you just might get more
nutrition as a result. In one Mexican
study, scientists found that this white
stuff in capsicums, which us plant
geeks call the ‘placenta’, contains the
highest concentrations of antioxidants
and polyphenols – as much as four
times that of the flesh itself. I love
when being lazy pays off.
BE A JAR HEAD
There are a few great brands of jarred
roasted capsicums out there that
contain nothing other than capsicums,
a little salt and a dose of antioxidants
as a natural preservative, meaning you
get super-convenient nutrition at the
twist of a lid. These can seem pricey
when compared to other jarred veg,
however, and because I am a terrible
cheapskate, I carried out a price
comparison. I bought and roasted a
whole bunch of fresh supermarket
‘value’ red capsicums and compared
the results weight-for-weight with the
contents of a jar. And guess what?
Even the fanciest jars of smoky Spanish
capsicums are half the price of roasting
your own and – if you get a good brand- have a flavour that’s surprisingly just
as good. Go for the brightest red ones
you can find.
HANDLING THE HEAT
Interested in the benefits of chillies, but
don’t like your food volcano-strength?
Fortunately, there are things you can
do about this. A fat-loving protein in
milk called casein works essentially
like detergent to stop the capsaicin
binding with the pain receptors on your
tongue – thereby reducing their burn.
What has even more casein than milk?
Well, cheese, which in many ways is
essentially milk with some of the water
removed. Paired with some cooling
cottage cheese or even Greek yoghurt,
even the super-strength chillies can
taste surprisingly mild. Dried chilli
flakes have the capsaicin trapped
within their fibrous structures, meaning
it can take a while for these to leach out
and become detectable on your tongue.
I have found you can sprinkle on a
surprising amount of these at the table
without noticing a huge difference,
yet take an identical quantity and
add it to the same dish as it simmers
on the stove and it’ll blow your head
off. The moral of the story? Sprinkle,
don’t simmer.
Finally, it is worth noting that
scientific trials have demonstrated that
tolerance to capsaicin can be acquired
extremely rapidly. In as little as 5 days,
what was once an excruciating burn
can be barely noticeable with a daily
exposure. So try upping your dose a
little each day and see how you go.Dried chilli flakes have t he capsaicin trapped wit hin t heir fibrous
structures, meaning it can take a while for t hese to leach out and
become detectable on your tongue...
The extract and
recipes on pages
80-82 are taken
from How to
Eat Better by James
Wong, published by
Mitchell Beazley.