2 hours ago, KennethT said:@liuzhou I was watching this video and was wondering what you thought of it:
There are a few Sichuan restaurants near us, which have been deemed "authentic" by a friend of a friend who grew up in Sichuan province somewhere. There are a few differences from their versions and this - they use copious amounts of garlic yet he doesn't seem to use any. He uses a pickled ginger, whereas the restaurants here use chopped fresh ginger (I have no idea if they use a pickled chili or not). The places here use quite a bit of leeks cut into about 25x40mm pieces while he uses what looks like garlic chives mainly as a garnish. Is he using Sichuan peppercorns at all? Is that what he means by 'Sichuan green peppercorns'? They look different than what I get here.
I'm curious as to how his version varies from what you see made in your local area... Thanks!
His ingredients do seem a bit odd. I've never seen pickled ginger being used in mapo doufu. He also uses pickled chillies. Pickled chillies are used a lot in Sichuan, but again, I've never seen them in mapo doufu. The lack of garlic is bewildering. Perhaps he just forgot!
The green peppercorns are indeed a variety of Sichuan peppercorn. The ones you are probably used to are the red variety. I have both, but I suspect the green ones are rarer outside China.
Green Sichuan Peppercorns
As to what the subtitles call the 'garlic sprout', the Chinese says 葱苗 (cōng miáo), which is literally 'onion sprout' and is the term used in Sichuan. I'm 99% sure that is what is known round here as 大葱 (dà cōng) meaning Chinese green onion or spring onion, a type of scallion See Allium Fistulosum.
大葱
That said, Chinese terms for scallion and leek type things are a notorious minefield. What means one thing in one part of the country often means the opposite in another. There is an old, confused and confusing eG discussion here on scallions, leeks etc. By the way, contributor @fiore is Fuchsia Dunlop.
