Chinese Szechwan Cooking

Szechwan cuisine is famous for its spicy, piquant dishes;

In the western part of the central province is a vast basin of luxuriant vegetation, bounded by mountain ranges and densely populated: Szechwan.

Szechwan is famous for its spicy, piquant dishes; for its fungi, particularly truffles, and for the subtlety of its 'hot', multi-flavored cuisine. It is also known as the site of the Chinese equivalent of Camelot!

The preponderance of hot spicy food has its roots in history. Only one great crop was produced each year, and in order to ensure an adequate supply of food the year around, they took to preserving their produce. The humidity precluded sun-drying or salting and so spicing was used instead. They made chili and peppercorn pastes fermented rice, made wine vinegar and added a fair bit of brown sugar. All of which resulted in a series of  fascinating savoury-hot, hot-sour-spiced, sweet-sour and sweet-hot-sharp dishes.

One of those dishes is Yu Hsiang Jou si, succulent pork strips stir-fried with what are called 'spicy' fish ingredients and fungi. Another is beef, carrots and peppers cut into strips and fried crisp with chilies.

The fungi which grow in Szechwan are particularly delicious. And like nearby Yunan--which is famous rather like Parma in Italy for just one thing: ham---it also specializes in preserving meats by curing and smoking them. Its dishes tend to be more oily than those of the other schools.