Recipes with chilli

Chilli does more than burn: it gives a dish its structure. The capsaicin it carries dissolves in fat and alcohol but not in water, which is why the cuisines that use it most almost always pair it with a fat — palm oil, coconut milk, butter, peanut — and why a glass of water relieves nothing.

Raw and chopped, it becomes a condiment in its own right: Sri Lankan lunu miris, Haitian pikliz and Kenyan kachumbari are chillies with a little something else. Toasted and ground, it turns into a dark, smoky base: that is what becomes of it in red pozole and Guatemalan pepián.

Elsewhere it is the counterweight to a sugar or a fat. Ghanaian kelewele throws it over ripe plantain, Ivorian alloco does the same, and spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino lets it steep in warm oil rather than scorch.

One name covers wildly different strengths: the recipes below name the variety they expect, and it is worth starting with half the quantity and tasting, since more can always go in.