A few years back my wife and I went to a very authentic Chinese restaurant recommended by one of our foreign students. We ordered a fish hot pot and really didn’t eat much of it because it made our mouths tingle in this really uncomfortable way, and it also made everything taste funny. I didn’t know what to make of it, my wife stopped eating after 2 or 3 bites and I forced down as much as I could to avoid feeling ashamed of my whiteness. We didn’t know if something had gone bad or what.
Today I took a bite of leftover crispy tofu from the place down the street, and I got that same tingly bad taste in my mouth. But this time, since it wasn’t a stew, I looked down to see what I could have eaten and saw these little peppercorns. Mystery solved! Sichuan peppers make my mouth go crazy with unpleasantness.
Does anyone else know about these things? Does anyone actually like them?
It’s a compound called hydroxy alpha sanshool that messes with the nerve endings, producing a sensation somewhere between carbonation and sticking your tongue on a 9v battery.
They don’t really taste like much on their own, but they do produce that odd sensation.
Yes, the first time I tried one, I thought I was having an allergic reaction. I just saw them in the store, bought them, and was unaware of their numbing properties. I love them, though, when combined with chiles for that ma la (hot numbing) flavor profile of Sichuan cookery.
I would say they actually have a fairly pronounced flavor, starting out kind of medicinal/mint/camphor, then a bit of citrus, and then that tingle hits you.
Oh, yes, I love these. They’re the “ma” in “la ma” (spicy food is just “la”), and it’s what makes Szechuan food Szechuan (or Sichuan, if you will).
You can get the bone marrow hotpot if you like; it doesn’t have these peppers. But it’s a sign of good hotpot if your mouth grows progressively more numb as the meal progresses (speaking for hotpot).
Hotpot is really Chongqing food; but Szechuan food uses it abundantly, too.
It’s not a good Sichuan meal unless you are crying, numb, drooling and most likely drunk. The peppercorns are used nearly universally in Sichuan food, usually combined with copious hot peppers. There are dishes that don’t have them, but many dishes do. It’s also sprinkled on snack food. It’s basically everywhere.
Sichuan food is probably one of the greatest food traditions on the planet. But it’s unremittingly spicy and ma-la (spicy and numbing) is a dominant taste. I loved, loved, loved eating there. I adapted to the spiciness, but sometimes I would get a little tired of the peppercorn on everything.
It’s common for tourists in the area to be surprised by the sensation, and to think their food is tainted. It’s worth noting that you are not supposed to eat the peppercorn itself, and doing so can over time lead to stomach irritation.
One of the saddest facts of life about Chinese food is that there’s no one, universal “Chinese food.” Actually, no, that not a sad fact at all! Regional variety is awesome. The sad fact is I live in Nanjing where the local cuisine is tasteless and not very appealing. Most of the Szechuan here is “fusion” meaning we get crappy Nanjing food with chiles and peppercorns added. :mad:
I can’t read Chinese menus particularly well, but I know the names of enough dishes that I can order without one. Living in Sichuan, however, I only learned to order Sichuan dishes. So when I travel to other part of China, I pretty much have to stick to Sichuan restaurants.
“Chinese Food” and “Indian Food” are categories more like “European Food” that covers everything from Spain to France to Britain to Scandinavia to Germany to Italy to Greece to Russia. European Food does make a certain kind of sense as a category, even though the food you get in Spain isn’t much like the food in Poland.
Back in the old days “Chinese Food” in the US meant Cantonese. It’s like if all the Europeans in our country were Portuguese, and so we thought European food was Portuguese food.
I hear that a lot, but the Chinese food I grew up eating is nothing like Cantonese food. Generic American Chinese food is battered beef, chicken, or pork, served with a brown sauce, orange sauce, lemon sauce, chilli sauce, or Szechuan (“hot”) sauce, and different mixes of vegetables. Add fried versus plain rice, and you have an infinite “variety” of dishes using only a few basic ingredients. It’s kind of the Taco Bell formula for “Mexican” food, wherein with tortillas, cheese, beans, a couple of meats, and you can have a menu board the size of Alaska.
In Huangshan city I had awesome lemon chicken: battered with a lemon sauce, served with rice. You know, good American Chinese food. It was called “American chicken” on the menu. :smack:
Oh, mild disclaimer: I don’t really know Cantonese food. I know “Cantonese” food in Hong Kong.
