Stir Fried Chicken with Szechuan Pepper

We planned a quick dinner this evening of stir fried chicken and bought most of the ingredients yesterday. We weren’t quite sure on an exact recipe, which was left up to me as I arrived home first and started slicing things. I sliced an orange pepper, half an onion, some baby corn and a large chicken breast, then finely chopped a garlic clove and grated half an inch or so of ginger.

I decided that as I was still waiting for Kerri to arrive, I might as well marinate the chicken to give it a little more flavour. So into a bowl it went along with some soy sauce and Chinese cooking wine. As I started grinding some black pepper into the marinade, I realised that what we needed was actually Szechuan pepper instead! We had some but had never used it, so now was the perfect opportunity. I didn’t know how much to put in, so added a teaspoon or so of it. I had a look at the side of the spice bottle and it recommended making a marinate of soy sauce, dry sherry and Szechuan pepper, so my impromptu marinade was pretty much spot on.

I’ve never looked very closely at Szechuan pepper before and I expected them to look similar to black or white peppercorns, but actually they are the shell of a little fruit / seed rather than the seed itself – the inside is thrown away. Lots of information about them in the usual place.

We stir fried the various ingredients, adding the marinade to the wok after a few minutes of frying, along with a little more soy sauce and Chinese cooking wine and just a dash of chicken stock before adding some rice noodles and turning the heat down to allow the noodles to heat through.

While I am sure that I have ordered dishes that claim to contain Szechuan pepper, I have never really noticed them to stand out. Which probably means that the dishes that I ordered didn’t contain enough. And that is also the impression that I get from most restaurant reviews that mention them – most of them will say something like “this dish should be spicy and mouth-numbing from the Szechuan pepper but sadly isn’t”. For those that haven’t tried them, they are an interesting experience because they certainly are mouth-numbing. They have a flavour somewhat reminiscent of spicy dried citrus peel and contain a compound which numbs the tongue and gives a strange sensation in the mouth completely separate from the spiciness.

All very interesting and surprising for a first memorable Szechuan pepper experience, considering that I am sure I have eaten it several times before but not really noticed the effects very strongly. Next time we’ll look up a proper Szechuan recipe rather than just cobbling one together.