For my French meal I thought to make a creole shrimp soup. The recipe called for frying the shrimp first in creole spices and then adding the vegetables and paprika. Fortunately I tasted the soup for salt and it was outrageously hot. Spicy hot. I could barely stand it. And I know one thing about my fellow French students. Spicy is not on the liste preferée. Pas du tout. I mean, like, they ain’t eatin’ this. As luck would have it I had enough shrimp to recreate the soup without the creole spice. (and enough time) so I took the original spicy soup, added noodles and had that for dinner (made the soup the day before). It was awesome! I mean, OK, it was hot but I can deal when I need to.
Unfortunately the re-made soup was also too hot (maybe it was the paprika but I tasted that to make sure it wasn’t hot and it didn’t seem to me to be). I mean, I didn’t think the soup was hot at all but the class, well, I can be as dramatic as the next person but they’re all up for Academy Awards for their supporting roles in spicy soup ingestion. Gasping, gagging, choking and wheezing while clutching their throats like they’d consumed Draino. I gave them a standing ovation.
Fine. I had it for lunch the next day and it was exquise.
