Danyull

Good luck on your tasty adventure! I've had similar musings although I stopped with the Sichuan and Hunan provinces. One thing that may help you is to get a historical and geographical understanding of the specific province or cooking style you're interested in and it'll help you understand some of the flavors and palate sensibilities. For example, Sichuan lies on a major trading route to India, Africa, Middle-East. Many dishes incorporate very heavy spices such as cumin, chile, peppercorns, etc due to the proximity to the spice trade. Additionally, the climate there is very hot and humid in the Summer and damp and cold during the Winter. Chinese traditional medicine recommends having cleansing foods such as chiles to help cleanse the body. Similarly, Canton has a vast coastline as well as a long growing season so the food their emphasizes the freshness of the seafood and produce. Hope that helps some.

I use a traditional round bottom steel wok on a regular gas stove, I just have gotten used to balancing it on the grates. Not the ideal obviously, but I found that the flat-bottom works just weren't as useful without the concave bottom. But if you MUST use a wok on a regular stove, the flat bottom kind is probably the best. While you CAN do most stir-frys, etc in a regular skillet, I've found that it gets too messy due to the short sides. The nice curve to the helps catch oil splatter and keep it from getting all over your stove. Due to the high heat required to properly stir-fry, cooking in a regular skillet gets too messy for my liking. One option is to get one of those portable wok burners that hook up to a propane tank. I stayed with a friend's aunt who had one of those on their balcony and they did all of their stir-frying out on the balcony. They get pretty hot (30-40k btus) but it's pretty ghetto. If you can get a wok range installed in your kitchen with a wok ring... I'm jealous.

I love cooking Sichuan and one trick that I use when making hearty dishes with dou ban jjang (fermented bean paste) is to push aromatics and other fragrant things to the side of the wok and fry the dou ban jjang for about 20-30 seconds before mixing it into everything else. Gives a nice caramelized and smoky flavor to the sauce. Also colors the oil a nice ruby red.

For the OP: Always great to meet another lover of Sichuan cuisine. I echo the many other readers in their endorsement of Fuchsia Dunlop's book(s). This may seem obvious but the key to making Sichuan cuisine is getting the right ingredients. Chinese cuisine has many regional variations and the key to making something "Sichuan" is to get the ingredients that are characteristic of the cuisine. You've touched on one, the Sichuan peppercorn that imparts the "ma" or numbing taste and other posters have mentioned the Facing Heaven chiles. If you have access to them, by all means, you them, but they are difficult to find. I live in the SF Bay Area with a large Chinese community and I haven't seen them fresh yet. So some key ingredients that you'll need to start off: Dou ban jjang - fermented broad bean paste Make sure you get the one made with fava beans and not soybeans. You'll actually be able to see them in the jar. I use the Lian How brand with the white cap and it's close enough to what I had in Chengdu and widely available. Tien mien jjang - sweet flour paste A really dark, salty and sweet sauce that looks like oyster sauce but a totally different texture and flavor. Fermented black beans - the whole ones Xiao xing rice wine - similar to cooking sherry That's what I can think of so far. With those and the aforementioned ingredients, you should be able to make most dishes.