Canadian author Naomi Duguid introduces herself on her website as being “curious about the world, an insatiable asker of questions…writer, photographer, storyteller, traveller“. Well, it takes a special gift to be able to meld those qualities and talents in the way she does, unfailingly engaging readers time and again.

Like so many readers (and cooks) around the world, I’ve been travelling vicariously with Naomi for many years now, going back to the day I came upon “Flatbreads and Flavors: A Baker’s Atlas” in a Vancouver bookstore. (That was the first of  her six award-winning cookbooks*, co-authored with Jeffery Alford). And ever since, I’ve been straggling along in the wake of her passage through countries as far flung and unfamiliar as Senegal, Azerbaijan and Mongolia, and some as near and familiar as India!

Through a medley of recipes, beautiful photographs, and evocative vignettes of places and peoples, Naomi lets you see and share more than just the food and foodways of those she meets on her travels. Her books read like the diaries of someone in love with the world. And that passion is infectious!

So, naturally, I was thrilled to meet Naomi in person when she visited  Vancouver last November, on a book tour for her newest work, “Burma: Rivers of Flavor”.

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Spring cleaning my  kitchen stores, and the evidence lies before me – I am besotted with chillis. Aleppo, Byadgi, Cayenne, Dundicut, Kashmiri, Naga, Turkish, Hungarian, Spanish, they come tumbling out. And I haven’t even got to the Mexican ones yet!

Each variety has a distinct place in the cuisine of distant and not so distant lands. Of all the foods that travelled from the New World in the Columbian Exchange, there can be little doubt that chillis dramatically changed the way we eat. Today, it’s hard to imagine a time without the rich spectrum of chilli cultivars that have worked their way into virtually every culinary nook and corner of the world.

With that world of chillis at my tingling fingertips, there’s one variety that holds a special place in my heart, and that’s the little Kanthari, a cultivar of Capsicum frutescens that’s commonly grown in Kerala and Coorg. In the Kodava language, it’s known as parangi malu*.

There are always little shrubs to be found growing in the kitchen garden, or wild in the countryside, springing up from seeds deposited by a satisfied bird. It’s also one of the small, pungent varieties referred to as “birds eye” because of their shape, but I like to think it’s a reference to how much the birds seem to like them. And birds really love those chillis – if you want any, you”ll have to fight for them!

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