I love having green chillies in my food. In my cooking green chillies are added for flavour or just to garnish. Green chillies are very hot and need careful handling. As lovely as they look, they are nasty if you mishandle them. Believe me.

My love and hate story with green chillies started when I was in college. During our summer holidays, my grandmother decided to invite her future daughter in-law’s family to our home for dinner. She prepared a list of traditional dishes and assigned each female person each dish to cook by following a proper recipe.

I was asked to make “Mirchon ka Salan” ( green chili curry). The recipe was simple to follow; spices were ground, tamarind was soaked to extract the juice, and one pounds of long green chillies were soaked in a large stainless steel bowl filled with salt water to take heat out of them. All female personnel got busy preparing their recipes and a tape recorder was playing music to entertain us. I rolled up my sleeves and dug my hands in the pot and began to deseed the chillies. For an hour sitting on a stool , I was plunging my palms in the salted water and taking chillies out one by one, deseeding them and stuffing them with spices. Before starting the final step of cooking, I felt that my hands were burning and were tomato red! I washed my hands with soap, to no avail. I was asked to put oil on my hands to relieve the burning, it burned more. I was given ice in a bowl to cool my hands. The ice melted and the heat in my hands was in full swing. Soon, my whole body was burning, two fans were placed either side of me to cool me down. I could not stay still in one place and started walking, swinging my hands, shaking them to get rid of that heat. Nothing worked. My maternal uncle woke up from his afternoon nap from all the commotion in the house, took a look at my hands and my face, and without saying a word, put his shoes on and left the house. In fifteen minutes he was back, and by that time my grandmother helped me to lay down on a day bed and slowly fanned my hands. With those soothing hands of my grandmother wiping the sweat off my face, I did not feel a needle pinch in my arm or one in my thigh. I woke up to find myself sleeping on a different bed in the courtyard, where we used to sleep during hot summer nights. I looked at the surroundings, every one was sleeping, my hands were normal, no heat, no redness. My mother got up to see if I was okay and asked if I wanted to eat something. The whole family woke up one by one and gave me the aftermath of the MORPHINE . One dose of morphine had given me a 10-hour sleep and comfort from the burning. My chili curry got its final touches by my aunt. I heard later that after dinner, each guest came to my bed while I was sleeping, and said their good-byes and thank you for making such a delicious Mirchon ka Salan!

sumac spice

Once when I was visiting  a Chilean-Syrian family in Ottawa,  I noticed my friend Fuxy putting a dark reddish spice into the salad dressing.  It was sumac, or as the famous chef Ottollenghi calls it, “magic dust”, and gave her salad a zingy citrusy flavour.  Fuxy gave me some to take home and I’ve been experimenting with it ever since — not only in salads, but also to make za’atar, with fish, chicken and lamb, and I sprinkle it on hummus instead of paprika, and on baba ganoush.

If you like the tartness of lemon, lime or hibiscus, I’m sure you’ll like sumac.  And it’s not only delicious but is an antioxidant and can “ boost immunity and slow the aging process“.  You can find the ground sumac spice in Middle Eastern grocery stores.

But what about all that sumac we see in Quebec? I did some research on-line and discovered that staghorn sumac, which always catches my attention in the fall because of its wonderful coloured leaves, is an edible variety.  (There is also poisonous sumac here but with its white berries, it is easy to distinguish.)

Staghorn sumac in October

Then I noticed that Lufa, which delivers a weekly basket of local fruits and vegetables, listed sumac under “Fresh Herbs & Spices”.  I ordered a cluster to grind so that I can find out what local sumac tastes like.

If you want to buy the Middle Eastern variety, I know that it’s available at  Marché Lobo, 3509 du Parc, for $4.99 lb.  A quarter of a pound  is plenty to start with.

Please tell us where you find it and  how you used it.   If you’re trying it for the first time,  let us know whether you liked the  taste of this “magic dust”.

Sumac cluster