My title may be overstating the situation, but not by much. At lunch and dinner, every day, Pelden ate at least one bowl of chilies. Sometimes there were two different types of chili dishes on the table.
Now at home, I love to eat Mexican food, Szechuan food, etc. I add hot red pepper flakes to my pizza and spaghetti. I order hot yellow curried vegetables at my favorite Thai restaurant. I buy hot New Mexican chili powder and ristras when I’m in New Mexico. In other words, I’m no slouch when it comes to fire in my food. But, my first chili at lunch the first day in Bhutan was too much for me. I tried again at dinner; it was more tolerable, but I gave up. Pelden got to eat the entire bowl(s) of chilies.
The most common chili dish is ema datse or ema daji–chilies and cheese. The cheese is very light, but pungent enough to counterweight the chilies. Most of the recipes I’ve found on the internet for this dish use feta. They also tend to use jalapeno peppers for the chilies, but the chilies I tried were much hotter than that.
Here are a few of the various types of chilies available at the Thimphu weekend market.
Green and Red Chilies
Red and Green Chilies
Dried Red Chilies