Sichuan Pepper is the blog about Szechuan style cooking, where you will find a lot of Szechuan style recipes.
If you haven’t yet heard about us, here is what you need to know: we are a group of people who are passionate about Szechuan food and have been working hard to make this blog great. We’ve been at it for a while now and have learned everything we can about this cuisine.
Some of our recipes are derived from Matt Gross’ blog Serious Eats, many others come from our own personal experience in the kitchen.
I am a big fan of the Sichuan style of cooking. I love spicy food and this is defiantly my favorite style of cooking. I have tried to find some posts that offer good information on how to cook this type of food, but have been unsuccessful so far. So I have decided to start a blog that will hopefully cover all aspects of Szechuan cooking.
I think this will be a fun project for me and maybe it will help others as well. I am hoping to share my insights, observations, and recipes in order to help others learn to cook this style of food correctly.
I also hope that others who enjoy Szechuan cooking will leave their own recipes and tips for us all to use. We can share our experiences and knowledge about this wonderful style of cooking!
I hope you will stop by often!
Memories of Szechuan Pepper is an online blog about Sichuanese food. It is written by two people, one who grew up in Sichuan and the other who did not. We have many recipe reviews and stories, but the main focus of the blog is teaching people how to cook Szechuanese food.
Hello and welcome to my blog. It’s my aim to share with you some of my favourite recipes, as well as introduce new dishes and ingredients, in the hope that you may also enjoy cooking Szechuan cuisine for yourself.
If you want to know what a particular dish is like, please consider leaving a comment or emailing me. Your feedback is extremely valuable.
Also, if there are any dishes that are not covered here, but which you would like to see featured, do let me know.
I hope you enjoy reading this blog just as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you for reading and I wish you happy cooking!
The photographs used in this blog are taken by myself unless stated otherwise or credited. You may freely use these photographs for personal use only. However, if you plan on using them for commercial purposes please contact me first.
Sichuan pepper is a spice made from the dried berries of a tree that grows in the Sichuan region of China. It is a member of the capsicum family and has the same kind of spicy bite as all peppers (black, white, red or green). It’s hotness can vary from moderately hot to extremely hot.
Szechuan pepper is an ingredient in Chinese 5-spice powder. It is also used in Chinese medicine.
Szechuan pepper is used extensively in Chinese cuisine and particularly in Sichuan cuisine.
Sichuan pepper is, in fact, the dried fruit of a non-poisonous plant related to citrus. The flavor is hot and fragrant. Whole peppercorns are used as a garnish in Szechuan cuisine, and the ground pepper is used in chili oil and “stir-fry sauce.”
It is bought whole or in powdered form; it should not be confused with black or white pepper, which are both derived from the Piperaceae family. It can be found in Asian markets either labeled as Szechuan pepper or by its Chinese name “huajiao.”
Monosodium glutamate is a chemical that occurs naturally in many kinds of seaweed, including kombu. But when you buy it in the store, it’s always been made by fermenting sugar beets or sugar cane. It’s a little like the way that beer and wine are made from fermented grains; in both cases, you are using microorganisms to convert one substance into another, but in one case you’re doing it to make alcohol and in the other case to make a flavor enhancer (umami). And in both cases there are some people who think that these things are bad for you, or at least not as good for you as the original foods.
I am not going to pretend that MSG is harmless. I can’t say I’ve ever been tempted to taste test pure MSG… But I will say that strange food additives do not especially bother me. If they are not actually poisonous or otherwise harmful, they are usually just new tastes and textures that we have to get used to. When I lived in Germany I was surprised at how frequently their food had what looked like cat fur floating on top of it, but after trying sauerbraten with horsemeat instead of beef I decided that those were just minor details and didn’t affect the flavor.
