Get your chillies and put them in a bowl. I used around 9 red chillies as that was all I had ready on my plant. Cover them with boiling water and cover the bowl for around 15 mins. There is plenty of heat with this number. If you like things a little less hot, use less chillies and vice versa if you want hot hot hot.

Whilst the chillies are soaking, take your caraway seeds, cumin seeds and coriander seeds and heat them on a dry pan or skillet. Only a low to medium heat is needed here and they will soon become nice and fragrant. Take them off at this point and grind them down. Also add some salt at this time. A teaspoon here will give a salty enough taste and more really does start to make it too salty but if you like it like that, you can always add more later than now.

Take your chillies from the water 1 at a time (don't discard the water though you may need it). Cut off the stems then deseed them by splitting them and scraping the seeds away so you are just left with the outer chilli. Once they are all deseeded,, add them to the grounded seeds.

Hard work time now, get grinding this so you really break down the chillies. You can use a processor for this of course but I love the control of pestle and mortar. You need to grind down till you only have small bits of chilli left, no chunks. This will be a dry mix so you can start to add olive oil to create paste; 1 Tbsp first whilst you grind it down and then 1/2 Tbsp a time after to your choosing. You may also want to loosen it with teaspoon of the water the chillies were in as that adds a nice flavour too. Be sure to scrape the mix from the sides too. Add half a teaspoon of lemon preserve if you like a zesty kick and a teaspoon of sweet pimentón or smoked paprika for that lovely earthy smoked taste. I used both smoked and lemon and it gave a lovely contrast.

Drop your peeled garlic in and grind into the mix then taste. Now is when you can start to tweak to your own tastes. I added a squeeze of tomato puree here and a little more salt. You can add anything from fresh lemon juice, preserved lemon, fresh or dried mint, fresh cilantro, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato paste, cayenne, paprika really. Your choice, experiment and at the end you'll have a superbly versatile paste/dip.