How Many Chillies are Needed?

Like other Indonesian families, my family enjoys various chilly sauces. Mum often grinds chillies with a pinch of salt and sugar, tomatoes, garlic and red onions, shrimp paste, mangoes and so on. It depends on the main dishes.

However, unlike most Indonesian families, my family doesn’t eat extremely spicy foods. So, if others need more than 5 chillies (some even needs more than 20 chillies), we are happy with 1-3 chillies, tiny ones. This morning mum asked me how many chillies I wanted for the chilly sauce, 2 or 3. I said 1.5 would be fine. So she chopped a tiny chilly and we had 1.5 chillies in the sauce, added with slices of mango, bunch.

For many Indonesians, chilly is an important ingredient. We need it in almost every meal we have. Few years ago, the price of chillies was rocketing high. It reached $9/kg, while before it was only 20 cents/kg. Surely many Indonesians were shocked, especially the poor who only could afford chillies as luxury in their lives. What did happen in my family? Mum and I (it was only us at home) only looked at each other and thanked God that we didn’t fancy spicy food so we’re fine.