Whenever I'm coming down with a cold (which I seem to be right now) I like to make my food a little spicier. It helps clear up any congestion and my dad tells me it's got vitamins "and stuff". My go to for heat these days is cayenne, one of the many cultivars of capsicum annuum.
Coming in at an impressive 30,000 - 50,000 Scoville units, a cayenne is roughly 6 times as hot as a jalapeño. Scared yet? Well don't be, because apparently it is also an aphrodisiac. Some like it hot indeed.
The taste is salty, tangy and a little sweet, making it perfect for just about anything. It certainly adds "brightness" to the flavor of the food, and by that I don't just mean the flames that will be shooting out of your mouth. I mean that while most spices bring a bit of "earthy" flavor, cayenne brings more of a light zing. It's more treble than bass. It's not quite as bright as, say, lemon zest, but it's not too far removed either.
Cayenne comes in both flakes and in powdered form. I personally like the powder more since the heat won't be all clumped up in sneaky little hate balls that explode like a dying sun when you bite into them, but to each their own. If you use it in cooking and cook the dish long enough, it's a moot point. Like all chilies, the heat comes mostly from the seeds but the flesh is plenty hot on its own. Don't underestimate the cayenne.
The heat of a cayenne pepper is so intense it can even cauterize wounds. Well, not really, but it CAN stop bleeding by causing blood to clot. I'm not sure this is the ideal method since it probably hurts so badly you'll wish you could just bleed to death instead, but if your vegetable chopping ever goes horribly wrong, it's nice to know you've got first aid right there.
Because cayenne is used in almost everything it's hard to find a recipe to showcase it. It doesn't help that most American recipes are light on spices and heavy on salt. I picked this one out because it uses considerably more of the spice than I would expect and is also very easy to make, so if the heat intimidates you, you can't use the complexity of the recipe as an excuse!
Spicy oven roasted chick peas
Speaking of heat intimidation, cayenne is actually a great way to build up your heat tolerance. Ever been hanging out with friends who dump sriracha all over everything but you had to politely decline? Well, no more! Just start small. 1/4 tsp in a large recipe (meaning it serves more than one) is a good start. Slowly add more until you can handle the burn. Remember, it's not an injurious conflagration, it's a bubbly tapdance of flavor elves.
Just have plenty of milk handy.
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