First Adventures in Sichuan Cooking

I’ve been meaning to buy Fuchsia Dunlop’s books for years; friends rave about them and as someone who loves eating Sichuan food, I really should have got my act together a bit sooner. Even now, this copy of Sichuan Cookery is borrowed from a mate – an exchange for my beloved (and signed!) copy of Persia in Peckham by shop keeper extraordinaire, Sally Butcher.

I thought it best to start with some classics so I settled on twice cooked pork (hui guo rou) and ma po dou fu, otherwise known as ‘Pock-marked Mother Chen’s Beancurd, after the inventor of the dish; the wife of a Qing Dynasty restaurateur who was terribly scarred as a result of smallpox. I’ve taken a while to come around to tofu but now I’m a fully fledged fan and if you want to convert another hater, then this is the dish that might just do it. Tender tofu is coated in a luscious thick sauce, tingly with Sichuan peppercorns and meaty with crispy fried beef – surprisingly comforting for a beancurd dish.

As I was serving up tofu to the rather sceptical boyfriend, I thought I better include a meat dish to soften the

....

- Source : http://helengraves.co.uk