Stupid hot
May 20th, 2007 by Peter
Kojak dropped by with this bottle of chili a few days ago:
He bought it in a new store in Copenhagen, where they only sell chili related products like: Honey with chili, mustard with chili and so on. He was told it was one of the hottest on the market. I know that there are some insanely hot fresh chilies, but I haven’t yet had a bottled one which uncontrollable hot. According to Kojak this particular bottle should be hot that just a needle drop would give you immense mouth pain for 10-20 minutes. So of course he had to buy it, right?
Anyway, he was kind enough to buy a bottle for me too and yesterday we decided to try it out together.
I must admit, that the bottle labels made me doubt the hotness. Not only is it called “Stupid hot” and the warning signs on the bottle are made in a humorous tone. If it really was that hot, wouldn’t there be some serious guidance to fools like us? Apparently not.
So we broke a bag of tortilla chips, and carefully squeezed out a few drops of the stuff in a bowl. Kojak had read up on the stuff and had me convinced to be extra careful, so we only let chips touch a tiny tiny tiny bit of the chili. And oh yeah – it was hot. Hotter than anything I’ve ever had before. I even tried slicing up the old Habanera and blending it with oil so I almost couldn’t breathe from damps. That was not a funny time, but again, this one seems to be even stronger. I’m happy I don’t work near the factory where the produce it.
C had one of her classmates over for dinner. She is also Chinese and said she likes hot food. We decided to dazzle her with our newfound power, and let her have a go at it. We did warn her about it being “stupid hot”, presenting her with the “the-worlds-hottest-hype” and everything, but she still took a bit more than we did. Kojak and I eyed each other with an “oh-no poor girl” notion, as she munched it down. Her eyes went blank as she let the taste sink in, and then she said: “Hmmm not that hot”. I couldn’t believe it. “Not that hot?”. So we convinced her to try out one more. This time she let the chips surf a good long one in the sauce bringing up way more sauce than what seemed sensible. I bet it was just to make sure that this time she’d shut us up, and give “the coup de grâce”. Again she said: “Not that hot”.
I know some Chinese eat really hot stuff, but this takes the price. I must have been looking like one big question mark when I asked her if she was sure that it was not hot at all? It couldn’t be true, but there was nothing to give her away for faking it. She just giggled indulgent at me. I’m pretty sure she just thought: “Silly silly Danish man. Do you think this is hot?” or something similar. After trying it, I know she couldn’t have faked it. It was that hot.
Kojak and I were in awe so after C’s friend went to talk to C, we just had to try it out again. This time we put on a bit more, just to be sure our first attempt wasn’t just bad luck. Well, I sat with my tongue out for about 5 minutes, and Kojak decided to spit the hell-juice out and go suck the old water tap a bit. Still the pain wouldn’t go away for the next 10 minutes.
Will we eat the stuff again? Well, lets see how the next major visit to the porcelain throne goes. If it’s the usual business, I’m pretty sure we’ll try it out again. If the toilet business is like the Niagara Falls, I think we’ll have to reconsider.
I can drink the whole lot in one sitting :-)
You’ll have a go next time you visit. I look forward to seeing your face after that bottle :-)
Many Chinese have this irrational belief that the hottest food on earth is to be found in China, namely Sichuan. I say irrational, because all of zero of the Chinese people who have told me this have ever left China or indeed tried any real foreign food.
I lived in Sichuan for nine months, and I can vouch that Sichuanese do tend to eat a lot of spicy foods, but that doesn’t mean they eat a lot of really spicy foods all the time, just a lot of mildly spicy foods all the time.
Anyway, the hottest meal I can ever remember having was a hotpot in Nanjing. The second hottest was some Thai in the States.
Uh, let me correct my English. By foreign food, I mean non-Chinese food. Living here for a while tends to make you turn anything non-Chinese into “foreign.” Nasty habit, that.
I had hotpot here in Denmark bout 3 or 4 times.
I never had a spicy version though. I bet that would make it more inviting to me than it is to me now.
I don’t mind about all people eating from the same bowl and mixing mouth water with chopsticks which would definitely turn off most Danes, but somehow the dish in itself doesn’t really appeal to me. Don’t know why, and can’t put my finger on the exact reason. C often asks me if I want hotpot and every time I always sigh a bit and say “all-right”. My enthusiasm is limited. On the other hand I always tend to overeat when I actually get around to the eating part. It’s a strange feeling.