Some in the dinner group faced this meal with trepidation. In Australia we have not had much access to the myriad of mild chillis that the Americas has. We're more familiar with the Hot and the Very Hot. Add to that the fact that chillis can be a bit of pot luck - some are excrutiatingly hot and some aren't, even though they look exactly the same.

This meal turned out to be the most individualised as each cook appeared to chose dishes close to their heart. Could it be that the threat of violence (chilli pain), caused us to subconsciously choose our personal comfort dishes?

Menu

Ultra Michelada
Extreme take on the 'Mexican Bloody Mary' combining chilli beer, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, lime and tequila, garnished with a pickled chilli and rimmed with sugar

Jerked and Pulled
Jerk pork, pulled and served on a betel leaf

Hot in the Sun
Pineapple, chilli and lime muddled with tequila and strained

A Mole of a Bird – 2006 Lost Valley Cortese
Roast quail with mole poblano sauce and black-eye bean, corn and tomato salsa

Some Like It Hot Soup – Tsing Tao beer
Northern Chinese-style hot and sour soup with dried Chinese mushrooms and pork balls

A Crab with Hot Buns – Disaster Bay Chilli Wine
Mud crab in Nonya-style fresh chilli and brown bean sauce with steamed buns

The hot and cold Dutch
Traditional Dutch potato and raw herring salad in cream and chilli dressing

Sticky Fingers Cake – Bison Grass Vodka
Orange, vodka and Kashmiri chilli syrup cake served with yoghurt

Hot Pops and Exotic Scotch
Mexican chilli lollipops and chilli chocolate shortbreads

The first cocktail of the evening (we are really starting to get hooked on our cocktails) was a happy marriage, even though it looked so so wrong on paper. Trust the Mexicans to come up with a version of the classic Bloody Mary that includes beer. Trust a German in our dinner party to decide it could do with a little more alcohol and add tequila. And add more chilli than completely necessary by making the beer be chilli beer. Chilli beer hurts. Effervescence only exacerbates the 'heat', or irritation, of chilli as both bubbles and chilli work through the transgeminal nerve (something in the mouth different to taste buds). We're not sure we'll be serving chilli beer at any barbecues this summer. However, adding Maggi Seasoning (another 'German' touch), tequila, worscestershire sauce and a few other flourishes actually improved the chilli beer and gave it body. We thought we could come at this cocktail 'the morning after' when a kick such as this could get you back on your feet.

The amuse bouche was a melt-in-the-mouth slow-cooked pork pull with seven kinds of chilli, many imported in hand luggage from the states, probably not legally.

Australian Quarantine can be really cooperative when you arrive armed with a copy of the Quarantine Act and the relevant schedule as it pertains to capsaisin species. The chillis for this were sourced mostly along Mission Street in San Francisco following a recent work trip, and included ancho chillis, mulato, pasilla, New Mexico, California, tiny chiles de arbol and smoky chipotles of a quality and freshness never seen in Australia.

After briefly roasting the above chillis, they were soaked them in hot water and pureed them with tomatoes, garlic, onion and vinegar in the manner of a pozole rojo, before adding it to cubes of browned pork shoulder. The lot was then cooked in a sealed pot in the oven for three hours, resulting in a sticky, red, smoky stew which paired brilliantly with the betel leaf. Originally, the intention was to make chargrilled tamales - the smoky, sticky steamed-then-grilled corn parcels popular all over Mexico - but the lack of corn husks (plus my inability to make fresh ones using local corn) meant it had to be rethought at the last minute. Plus, the pozole had been made a couple of weeks earlier, with the addition of cassava chunks and hominy to the mix. Not that leaving these ingredients mattered the second time around - it still worked a treat.

This was paired with a cocktail of pineapple, chilli and tequila, using the soaking liquid from the chillis earlier for complexity. After muddling the pineapple with lime and a little fresh chilli, the chilli liquor and tequila was added before straining into a glass and garnishing with a chunk of grilled pineapple. Oy vey!

ENTREE GOES HERE

Traditionally from northern China, this hot sour soup bobbed with the additon of pork and dried Chinese mushroom dumplings. At once aromatic, appetite inducing and refreshing this proved the perfect interlude after the previous two, very rich, appetisers. Even the chilli disbelievers were beguiled - proving once again that a fine broth is medicine. Accompanied by the VB of China (Tsing Tao), we felt reinvigorated to carry on.

This is the first time seafood had featured in the dinner. The sweet white flesh of crab in particular is an excellent foil for murky nonya or Singapore chilli sauces. The nonya (or Peranakan) cooking style is particularly influenced by trade: it's crossroads cooking rooted in the communities of the descendants of early Chinese settlers to the Straits (including Malaysia and Java) who married indigeneous inhabitants. It's difficult to imagine the food of South East Asia without chillies now, however that was the case until Portuguese traders introduced them. Interestingly the term nonya or nyonya refers to the women of these communities - does this mean the cooking style is home-style?

This recipe was based on Cheong Lieu's and used small mudcrabs bought in Chinatown. The flesh was a little mushy by the time the crabs were cooked - suggesting the extremely muggy day had hastened deteriation during the drive home and then in the wait before hitting the wok. In any case the crabs were extremely sweet and the sauce a complex, finger-sucking affair at once salty, a little hot and a little bit funky. Steamed buns proved an excellent accompaniment for mopping up the sauce. The Disaster Bay Chilli Wine was a very sweet accompaniment that nonetheless had a deep scratch for the back of our throats - a sharp reminder that this was wine produced solely from chillis and to be sipped, not quaffed.

Herring is difficult to purchase fresh in Australia, however can be bought raw and frozen from the Dutch Shop in Smithfield. In this traditional Dutch salad the raw chopped herring was combined with potato, cream, gherkin, dill and fresh green, chopped chilli. Comfort food! The fresh, 'green' flavour of the chillies was not dissimilar to the gherkins and cut through the rich fish and cream exceptionally well. The non-Dutch made mental notes to remember this recipe for ho hum Sydney barbecues.