Part One: China Great Cuisines of the World

Chinese cuisine is one of my favourite cuisines and a long time ago,  I had devoted my spare time in trying to duplicate some of the  Chinese dishes that were not available here in Cebu. There were no culinary schools then, no food videos to watch, no internet to roam and no chefs to guide me in this journey to culinary enlightenment. Books were the only friends I had and the best Chinese cookbooks to read were those written by foreigners who had lived in China.

China is such a huge country with 23 provinces, autonomous regions, centrally administrative municipalities and special administrative regions. In order to understand its cuisine, some method of classifying the dishes is necessary and the book, Chinese Regional Cuisine Series, Szechuan Cooking (Hilit Publishing Co.) suggested that you can use the rivers in China to delineate the boundaries of its cuisine.

The first region is the area around the Yellow River (Huanghe) and this would be best represented by the cuisine of Beijing (North). The second region or South cuisine (Cantonese) developed along the banks of the Zhujiang River (Pearl River). On the Eastern section of the Yangtze River (Changjiang), we have Shanghai cuisine representing the region and on the Western side, we have Szechuan cuisine.

The latter is least understood since it the least familiar to our palates (Cebuanos do not like chilli-hot foods compared to our Bicolano friends) and it took the publication of Mrs. Chiang’s Szechwan Cookbook by Ellen Schrecker to guide me in the preparation of its dishes. The region also uses a special spice called the Szechuan peppercorn (huâ jiâo). It is not hot as chillies but is spicy, causing a mild aromatic numbing quality and with a unique fragrance. This is what makes the dishes of the western region “very Szechwanese.” It is available in local Chinese drugstores because it is a component of the more popular “five spice powder.”

I joined my media colleagues to a luncheon at the Tea of Spring restaurant at Shangri-La’s Mactan Resort with guest Chef Shi preparing some spicy specialties from Szechuan.

The following dishes were served: Sliced Ox Tripe and Ox Tongue in Chili Oil, Fish Soup in Marinated Sour Pickle, Sautéed Shrimp with Chili, Sautéed Shredded Pork with Black Fungus and Lettuce Buds, Poached Sliced Beef in Hot Chilli Oil and Dan Dan Noodles. The Sautéed Shrimp with Chili had this most incredible taste or zhen wer as a result of the principle of careful preparation.

Very recently, I was able to obtain a copy of the Bizarre Foods Szechuan episode and I made a mental comparison between the dishes in the series and the dishes we ate during lunch. My conclusion was that guest Chef Shi was too accommodating to those present who could not tolerate the fiery nature of Chengdu and Chongqing dishes.

Your favourite food columnist made a request of a dish called Mapo doufu or “Pockmarked-Face Lady’s Tofu” because the person who first made the dish had a face disfigured by pockmarks (small pox?). This dish is a Szechuan classic made with tofu (bean curd) with minced meat (pork or beef) with a chilli sauce and I want the sauce to be as hot (chilli hot and huâ jiâo má là) as what they serve in the province.

And that dish, excuse me, made my day bright and beautiful!