Here I was popping tags, and bottles in the Big Apple. I have been to some of the best Italian restaurants, but this one, Ai Fiori, the food here takes me back to Trentino-Alto Adige. The spaghetti blue crab with lemon, bottarga, and chilies are enticing to my taste buds, which leads me to this. As I was eating my meal, I began to wonder where chilies are from. I mean these chilies are crispy, juicy, and tastes like no other thing I can think of.  Crispy and juicy does not sound like something of the French and Italian culture, both being of the Old World, so what about chilies?

            I did some research on chilies when I arrived back home, and this is what I found. Chilies are a spice which gained universal significance as one of the few spices to travel from the New to Old World. Chilies are the fruit of the Capsicum genus of flowering plants, and range from sweet bell peppers, which have no heat, to the Naga chili, which are currently the world's hottest pepper. Chilies come from the Americas, where they have been refined and were probably a vital part of the Mesoamerican diet. For example, the great amount of Vitamin C in red peppers increases the uptake of non-red blood cell iron in diets that has little to no meat.

            Christopher Columbus encountered chilies on his first voyage to the Caribbean in 1492, but he did not bring any chilies back on the voyage. Columbus wrote of a pepper that Natives called Ají, which was better in taste and nature than ordinary peppers. It was the Portuguese in 1498, who took the chili pepper, most particularly the piri-piri chili, to Portugal and Cape Verde Islands. As Portugal sought to exploit their foothold in the Americas, they brought chilies to West Africa and African slaves to Brazil. Between 1498 and 1549, chilies had spread east, over the Silk Route and through Portuguese conquests in India, Spice Islands, China and Japan so by 1549 chilies were known as far as Japan.

            Back to me sitting at home, I found this information quite interesting and decided to make spaghetti blue crab for dinner tomorrow. Below is the recipe I used.

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

3 cloves garlic, peeled, smashed and minced

1 28-ounce can peeled tomatoes

2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

1/2 teaspoon red-pepper flakes

4 large blue crabs

Kosher salt

1 pound dry spaghetti

½ cup fresh basil leaves

Freshly ground black pepper to taste.

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. When it begins to shimmer, add garlic and cook for 1 minute or until it is fragrant. Add the tomatoes, crushing them by hand as you do so, as well as the parsley and red-pepper flakes. Stir and allow to come to a simmer.

2. Turn the heat up to high and add the crabs. When the sauce starts to boil, lower the heat to a gentle simmer and cook for 30 minutes or so. Remove the crabs to a serving bowl and cover to keep warm.

3. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until it is firm — Drain.

4. Place the pasta in a large serving bowl or platter and drizzle with olive oil. Pour the crab sauce over the pasta, scatter the basil leaves over the top and season aggressively with black pepper. Serve with crabs on the side and lots of bread. Serves 4

-Dionna Green