It took three tries to figure out what all the excitement was about. An ardent lover of Chinese food, I drooled my way through Fuchsia Dunlop’s three cookbooks on the subject. Two of them are devoted to Sichuan cookery, a cuisine famous for its extensive use of chili and Sichuan peppercorns.
Dunlop’s rapturous descriptions of the Sichuan peppercorn’s mysterious tingling and numbing effects piqued my curiosity. My quest took me to the local 99 Ranch, the West Coast chain of Chinese supermarkets. No Sichuan peppercorns. I did, however, find a dusty canister at my local American market. When I opened it, I found what looked and tasted like brown woodchips. I tossed them, rooted around in another market, bought another packet. More woodchips. On my third attempt I ripped open the tiny bag and popped a couple into my mouth while unloading groceries.
Finally! The world didn’t judder off its axis, but my lips went mildly numb. Not dentist-visit numb, or certain illegal drugs numb. Just pleasantly numb. Comfortably numb. In her memoir of life in China’s Sichuan Province, Shark’s Fin And Sichuan Pepper, Dunlop writes, “Sichuan pepper is the original Chinese pepper, used long before the more familiar black or white pepper. It is not hot to the taste, but makes your lips cool and tingly. In Chinese they call it ma, this sensation.”
Called hua jiau in Chinese, Sichuan peppercorns (Zanthoxylum simulans) are the husks of the prickly ash. According to Dunlop, the finest are grown in the mountains of Hanyan County, China. Ancient texts prescribed Sichuan peppers for flatulence, ulcers, and as a diuretic. In large doses, however, the Sichuan peppercorn is fatal.
Dunlop’s first cookbook, Land of Plenty, specializes in Sichuanese cooking. In it, she offers a wealth of fascinating information about this region. Because Sichuan province has a hot, humid climate, its citizens are encouraged to consume spicy, hot foods, offsetting what is considered dangerous dampness. Sichuanese cooking is codified into the “23 Flavors of Sichuan”, combining ingredients like dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, ginger, garlic, salt and, of course, Sichuan peppercorns.
There are 56 methods of cooking the 23 flavors of Sichuan. Westerners are familiar with stir frying and steaming, but the Sichuanese break cooking methods down into far greater detail. One can describe wok use in numerous ways: raw-frying, dry-frying, cooked-frying. Other cooking techniques include dry-braising, home-style braising, or braising using specific ingredients like scallions or soft foods.
All of this means Sichuan peppercorns and their frequent accompaniment, the chili pepper, are not blunt force actors. Rather, they work on a level of sophistication of which many Westerners, accustomed to ersatz Chinese food, have little understanding.
This may be ascribed to ignorance, but fear plays an even larger role in many Westerners’ responses to Chinese food. In Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, Dunlop writes that her initial experience of Sichuan peppercorn evoked intense dislike; she found it “utterly unpalatable”. This pales beside an experience Dunlop had at an Oxford food festival, where one man was so alarmed by Sichuan peppercorns he thought Dunlop was trying to poison him. He still won’t speak to her.
Now, when introducing Western friends to this alarming spice, Dunlop takes almost comic care. Newbies are seated comfortably, given a bit of Sichuan peppercorn, advised to chew briefly, then spit it out. We Westerners are a fearful bunch.
Even those who fear the dentist or who think that illicit substances should be avoided should try Sichuan peppercorns. At the low end, they’re a cheap thrill. More seriously, they are just that: serious gastronomy whose taste is startlingly different to the Western palate—and shockingly good. It is said the slight numbing effect opens the door to tolerating greater spiciness. I haven’t found that. Instead, the slight tingling is another level of flavor and sensation, and the sensation is quite welcome. Dunlop calls Sichuan peppercorns the “Space dust of the spice world.” Indeed.
After my happy immersion in Dunlop’s work, I attempted to look elsewhere to learn more about Sichuan peppercorns. I didn’t get far. A search of English-language Chinese cookbooks came up with little. Most combine several regions in one book, often under the auspices of the wok, the noodle, the dumpling, or the slimming wonders of the Chinese diet. Any attempts to learn more about Sichuan peppercorns beyond what is found in Dunlop’s work, it seems, would require either a visit to China or a crash course in Mandarin. I did find one helpful blog, Elaine Luo’s China Sichuan Food. Luo is a Sichuanese native currently living in Guangdong Province. Her English is imperfect, but my Mandarin is nonexistent, so it works.
I suspect I’ll have little luck finding them fresh. Thus, my next foray will be online. I wholeheartedly recommend the website Penzey’s spices, both for their selection and their support of Marriage Equality/LGBT Rights.
Such is the allure of the Sichuan peppercorn. Visually unprepossessing, a tiny, reddish-brown bud smaller than a seed pearl, the Sichuan peppercorn has the capacity to carry an entire cuisine. It can frighten grown men. It can send an adult woman out to wander through unknown markets, and peer at the bottles and jars and boxes of frozen alligator, buying bags of ya cai, or preserved mustard greens along the way to her quest.
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Above image, Sichuan pepper, from Shutterstock.com.