The World's Hottest Chilli Dish?

Get ready for them, the world's three hottest chilli dishes. One from India, one from Africa and the other a fusion of African and Indian influences invented by me to please my wife's chilli-mad Liberian friends.

I'm a bit of a chilli fiend... Which is odd for a Celt who grew up on plain but wholesome fare. I was introduced to chillies by a Malaysian friend and was instantly hooked. Which was a good thing as a subsequent girlfriend's family came from the Punjab and they're weaned on chillies! Now my wife is Liberian, from West Africa and their national dish is the blazingly-hot 'Pepper Soup'. She doesn't think that a dish is fit to eat unless it contains mounds of chillies and she craves hot peppers as a pick-me-up when she's ill.

I've collected chilli-based recipes for a long while now and recently a friend of my brother's brought some of the world's hottest chillies (Naga Jalokia) back from Sri Lanka with him. I simply had to crate a curry with this. The recipes below compare a Jalokia Curry with a truly fiery Jalfrezi I made in Senegal for my wife and friends over Christmas with a West African Pepper Soup. These are three of the hottest dishes I've tasted anywhere and each could vie with the other for the title 'The World's Hottest Dish'.

Typical African chillies are the piri-piri which has been naturalized in the wild in West Africa and are pretty ubiquitous in every dish. The red habanero (which is Africa's hottest chilli, but less aromatic than its Antillais Caribbean cousin) and the Safi Scotch Bonnet which is a West African strain of the Scotch Bonnet and is hotter than the standard strains.

The Bhut Jolokia (also known as Naga Jolokia, Ghost Chili, Ghost Pepper, Naga Morich) is a chili pepper that grows in northeastern India (Assam, Nagaland, and Manipur) and Bangladesh and the various strains of this have now been confirmed as the world's hottest chillies reaching a heat peak of almost 1 000 000 Scoville units). However, African habaneros can easily reach a peak of 900 000 Scoville units so, in general usage there probably isn't that much difference between the Jalokias and the African habaneros. This is why I equate the recipes below in terms of fieryness:

Naga Curry

3 cinnamon sticks
2 tbsp Garam Masala
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp freshly-grated ginger
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp ground curry leaves
1 tbsp paprika
12 to 15 Naga Jalokia chillies, chopped
100g red lentils
450g cubed beef
2 large onions, finely sliced
4 tbsp butter or ghee
salt and black pepper, to taste
10 small Charlotte potatoes, halved
5 Naga Jalokia chillies, sliced

Add the butter or ghee to an oven-proof casserole and use to sweat-down the onions until mealtingly soft. Now add the spices and the first lot of chillies and stir through. Add the beef and stir until completely browned before adding the lentils, seasoning to taste and adding enough water to completely cover all the ingredients. Bring to a simmer, cover the dish and place in an oven pre-heated to 150°C. Allow to cook for an hour then add the potatoes and the remaining chillies.

Cover the pan and cook for a further hour, toping-up the liquid if necessary. Serve the chilli hot with plain rice, naan bread and a yoghurt-based dip.


Fiery Chicken Jalfrezi

Ingredients
6 tbsp Vegetable Oil

5 Scotch Bonnet Chillies
2 habanero chillies
6 ripe tomatoes, chopped
6 garlic cloves
8 dried piri-piri chillies
450g chicken breasts, cubed
1 1/2 Large onions, finely chopped
2 Red Scotch Bonnet Chillies, shredded lengthways
2 Green Birds Eye Chillies, shredded lengthways
3 Tomatoes, thickly sliced
1 tsp Salt
2 tsp Paprika
2 tsp Chilli Powder
2 tsp Garam Masala
2 tsp Ground Cumin
2 tsp Ground Coriander&
1 tsp Crushed Garlic
1½ tsp Grated Fresh Ginger
1 tsp Ground Fenugreek
2 tbsp Fresh Coriander, finely chopped

First make your chilli paste by adding half a chopped onion, the garlic, the whole Scotch Bonnet and Habanero chillies along with the piri-piris to a pestle and mortar. Render to a paste then add the chopped tomatoes and pound until you have a smooth puree.
Now prepare the chicken by dicing the meat into 2.5cm cubes. Add about 5tbsp of oil in a frying pan along with 4 tbsp of the chilli paste. Fry for about 5 minutes until it darkens. Now add the meat and stir until coated. Turn down the heat to a simmer, add half the remaining chilli paste, cover and cook for about 35 minutes until the chicken is done. Allow to cool and set aside in the fridge until needed (you may even freeze the lamb in ready to use packets).
Heat the vegetable oil in a larage frying pan, add the garlic and ginger and fry for 2 minutes. At the end of this time add the onions and and fry over medium heat until translucent. Now add the remaining chilli paste and cook until just boiling before adding the meat, salt, paprika, chilli powder, ground cumin, ground coriander and ground fenugreek. Mix into the curry sauce and cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes. Now add the garam masala and tomatoes. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about five minutes.
Take the curry off the heat, allow to settle for a minute, skim-off any excess oil and serve sprinkled with the chopped coriander and the shredded chillies.
This is my favourite curry dish and I like it very hot, reduce the amount of shredded Scotch bonnets for your own taste.


West African Pepper Soup

15 Scotch Bonnet chillies
6 Habanero chillies
handful of dried piri-piri chillies

Juice of 1 lime

Fish for stock (fish heads/trimmings are fine)

2 onions, roughly sliced

1 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp salt

vegetable oil

6 cloves garlic, finely chopped

Place the piri-piries in a bowl and cover with water. Allow to rehydrate for at least 3 hours. At the end of this time drain the chillies (reserve the water) and add to a pestle and mortar along with half a sliced onion. Pound to a paste then add the habaneros and all but 5 of the Scotch bonnets. Pound the mixture to as smooth a paste as possible.

Now make a fish stock by gently frying the fish heads/trimmings and half the garlic in a little oil for a few minutes. Add about 2l water (including the chilli soaking water) to this and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer, and cook for 20 minutes. At the end of this time strain the stock to remove the fish and garlic and reserve the broth.

Add about 60ml vegetable oil into a large stock pot, add half the chilli paste and fry until aromatic. Now add the onions and garlic and fry for about 5 minutes. Season with the salt and pepper then add the lime juice fish stock and remaining whole chillies. Bring to the boil, reduce to a slow simmer, cover and cook for 20 minutes. Add the remaining chilli paste and cook for a further 20 minutes.

The soup can be served as it is (the guest would mash the whole chillies with the back of a spoon before eating) or, alternatively mash the chillies with a fork and then serve in soup bowls. Other variants of this basic soup will include meat, fish, shellfish, prawns, crabs or any combination of these.

Please note that these dishes really are hot... My tolerance for chillies is very high. So be careful when preparing and consuming these dishes!

About the Author

Dyfed Lloyd Evans runs the Celtnet Recipes site. He has been collecting chilli recipes for over two decades and you can find many of these recipes on his Chilli Recipes Collection pages. This article helps support the Liberian refugees forced to flee to Senegal, West Africa. See how you can help at the One Million People campaign page. Just 50 cents from you really can make a difference.