Szechuan cooking at home

[jsmeeker]

Inspired by some wine I bought, I want to take a stab at Szechuan style cuisine.

Help me prepare Szechuan or Szechuan style food in my home kitchen. Right now, I am looking for the spicy Szechuan food (though I understand it's not always spicy). I do have some Szechuan peppercorns. I also understand that chilies are a big part of the spice in this style. Living in Texas, I am no stranger to chilies. Both fresh and dried. Fresh jalapenos and serranos are comon items in my kitchen. For dried, I have guajillos and arbols on hand. Do these work in Szechuan cooking, too?

What about meats? Beef, pork, chicken.. I like it all. Seafood, too. (shrimp, scallops, etc.)

For preparation, I want to start with pretty easy and not too many ingredients. Simple stir fry is always good. something I can knock out pretty quickly on a weekday if I do some prep work the night before would be awesome. Easily obtainable ingredients is key, too.

So, tell me what to do! I want to get cooking.

[sheetz]

Try one of the recipes by Fuchsia Dunlop: Ma Po Dofu (Pock Marked Mother's Bean Curd), Dan Dan Noodles, and Kung Pao Chicken are some of the most famous dishes from this region.

http://uktv.co.uk/food/item/aid/530777

[C. sapidus]

Inspired by some wine I bought,  I want to take a stab at Szechuan style cuisine.

Must have been good wine.

For dried, I have guajillos and arbols on hand.  Do these work in Szechuan cooking, too?

Dried de arbol chiles could certainly be used in Sichuan recipes, but the dried, roundish “facing heaven” chiles provide more color and somewhat less heat. You can adjust the number of chiles to your desired heat level, of course.

Sichuan chile bean paste is one of our most frequently used ingredients, and should be available if you have access to an Asian market (or the internet ).

What about meats?  Beef, pork, chicken.. I like it all. Seafood, too. (shrimp, scallops, etc.)

←

Pork, chicken, and fish seem to be the most common proteins, but you will find recipes for shrimp, beef, tofu, and lots of vegetables.

Definitely get Land of Plenty. The dry-fried chicken and beef recipes yield particularly delicious results. Sheetz linked a number of recipes, but here are a few more to give you the flavor:

Beef with cumin

Dan dan noodles two ways

Dry-fried green beans

[liuzhou]

Seafood, too. (shrimp, scallops, etc.)

Remember that Sichuan is landlocked and far from any seas, so seafood, although available, is not so common. Most fish are fresh water varieties.

Get the Fuchsia Dunlop book.

(BTW. The "Beef with cumin" recipe is not from Sichuan. She does write about other areas. )

Edited September 26, 2008 by liuzhou (log)

[C. sapidus]

(BTW. The "Beef with cumin" recipe is not from Sichuan. She does write about other areas.  )

←

Oops, my bad. Beef with cumin is an Uyghur-influenced dish from Fuchsia Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province (also very much worth getting).

Thanks for the correction.

[Mr Wozencroft]

Can I chime in with recommending Fuchsia Dunlops book?

Too late, I already have.

I have been working my way through it for the past few months. I am slowly trekking up to mount hotpot. The chicken with chillies, dry fried chicken and the ma po dou fou (among others) are already firm favourites.

The key is to get the freshest, most potent, sichuan peppercorns that you can.

The peppercorns available from your local chinatown will not do. Thats an order.

Look for the chilli bean paste that includes Broad beans (Fava Beans). I use the Lee Kum Lee brand, not sure if its available in the U.S. The facing heaven chillis I have found impossible to source so I use a chinese dried red chilli's and they work a treat.

Enjoy and dont forget, you are nothing without good stock.

[liuzhou]

The Lee Kum Lee brand is certainly available in the US. It is also the easiest to find in China.

Facing Heaven Chillis were available in the UK via mail order until recently. I have no idea why it stopped.

By the way: Don't do what a friend did and order both "Land of Plenty" and "Sichuan Cookery". They are the same!

For some unknown reason the American publisher renamed it. It is essentially the same book. Even Amazon got confused for a while and was offering the two together at some sort of discount.

Her next book, Revolutionary Cooking is equally good.

Edited September 27, 2008 by liuzhou (log)

[philadining]

I've been seeing beef (or lamb) with cumin on a lot of menus at restaurants that purport to be cooking traditional Sichuan food, so I wonder if it's something that has migrated into that tradition? I've also seen it at (non-Uighur) Northern Chinese restaurants, so I think it's a pretty well-dispersed recipe, at least in northern and western cooking.

I'm sure Liuzhou is correct that it's not originally from Sichuan, but maybe it is considered a "traditional" dish now?

In any case, it's delicious, you should make it...

[jsmeeker]

Thanks everybody! These are great tips.

We DO have Asian markets here in the Dallas area, so if I need specialty ingredients (especially things in jars or bottles that have decent shelf life), I don't mind driving a bit to get them.

FWIW, the wine is a Torrontes. They say it goes great with spicy stuff and it's been suggested that Szechuan is a perfect pairing.

[sheetz]

FYI, I was looking through the recipes from the link I provided and found that the Kung Pao Chicken recipe had a couple of typos in the list of ingredients. Here's the correct recipe:

http://www.leitesculinaria.com/recipes/coo...k/kung_pao.html

[liuzhou]

Beef and cumin is available pretty much all over China. Just as Sichuan food is available all over China, it has spread.

There are a couple more Sichuan recipes from Fuchsia here.

Edited September 27, 2008 by liuzhou (log)

[jo-mel]

One Sichuanese dish I really like is Shredded Beef. Not many places make it right -- in that the beef is usually just stir/fried. The beef is supposed to be chewy, done by long cooking of the shredded slivers, or by deep/frying, and most often the dish has carrots in it that are cooked to a sweetness state. Sometimes there is a sauce and sometimes the beef just has a glaze, but it is the texture of the beef that is interesting. One of the best I've had was at Shun Lees in NYC. "Land of Plenty" has a good one, but doesn't have the carrots. I don't know how authentic the carrots are, but I like them done in this manner. Here is one that I use:

SICHUAN SHREDDED BEEF

Ingredients:

1 pound flank steak

2 eggs

¼ tsp. salt

4 Tbsp. flour

2 to 3 carrots - julienne

1 large stalk celery – julienne

2 scallions – shredded diagonally

2 thin slices ginger – shredded

2 cloves garlic – minced

2 to 3 small, green or red chilies, seeded and shredded

Sauce:

1 tsp. hot bean paste

1 Tbsp. soy sauce

1 Tbsp. sherry

2 tsp. sesame oil

1 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. cornstarch

2 Tbsp. chicken broth

4 cups oil for frying

½ tsp. ground Sichuan peppercorns for sprinkling

Preparation:

---Cut the steak across the grain into ¼ inch strips, about2 inches wide. Then cut, with the grain into ¼ inch thick shreds.

---Beat the eggs, add salt and flour and mix well. Add beef. Mix and let marinate 20 + minutes.

---Shred the carrots into their own bowl.

---Combine the celery, scallions, ginger, garlic and shredded chilies in a bowl.

---Combine the sauce mix

Cooking:

---Heat the oil in a wok until smoking. Add the beef shreds and deep/fry for 4 to 5 minutes, stirring to separate the shreds. Remove with a slotted spoon to drain.

---Add the carrots to the wok and deep/fry for about 1 ½ minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon to drain.

---Pour off excess oil, leaving about 1 Tbsp. oil in the wok. (or use another pan)

---Add the celery, scallions, ginger, garlic, shredded chilies, and carrots to the wok and stir/fry about 1 minute.

---Stir the sauce, add to the wok, and bring to a boil while mixing.

---Return the beef to the wok and mix in till well coated with the sauce.

Note:

Ground Sichuan peppercorns: Heat one or more Sichuan peppercorns in a dry skillet over medium heat, for 4 to 5 minutes, until they are fragrant and turn a darker brown. Grind in a mortar or mill. Store in a tight jar. They will keep indefinitely.

[Danyull]

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.

[Carlovski]

The Fuschia Dunlop books got me enthused with chinese food again, and Szechuan cuisine in particular. That and trips to Red Chilli in Manchester (Se the UK forum for details...)

The chinese supermarket near me does sell what I am fairly sure are the facing heaven variety of chillies - they are the right shape and have more colour than heat. If any UK based people (Don't really want to mess around with international post, and potential breaking of laws of importing foodstuff!) want some I can pick some up and post them next time I make a trip if they like (They are less than a pound for a big bag). PM me if you want some.