The Sichuan Table

Sichuan lies in the south-west of China, its heartland a fertile basin ringed by mountains and watered by the Yangtze and its tributaries, with Chengdu at its centre and Chongqing, long part of the province, to the east. The cooking was documented for the English-reading world in Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Plenty, which set out the cuisine by its techniques and its flavour combinations rather than by a list of famous dishes. The basin's mild, damp climate and rich soil gave it a reputation for abundance, which the book takes as the ground of its table.

The first thing to be understood about Sichuan cooking is that it is not simply hot. Chillies reached China from the Americas and came into Sichuan cooking relatively late, and the region's older pungency came from Sichuan pepper, Zanthoxylum bungeanum, ginger and spring onion. The cuisine as it is now known rests on a range of named flavour types, among them the numbing-and-hot, the fish-fragrant, the strange-flavour and the home-style, each built from a fixed set of seasonings in a particular proportion. Dunlop in Land of Plenty treats these combinations as the grammar of the cuisine, and the cook who learns them can read a menu as a musician reads a score. The seasonings carry the structure. Doubanjiang, the fermented broad bean and chilli paste, is the foundation of many braises and of the cooking of the home kitchen, and the paste from the county of Pixian is the one protected by a Geographical Indication. Sichuan pepper gives the tingling numbness called ma, which is distinct from the burning heat of la, and the two together make the signature of mala. Fermented vegetables, preserved mustard stem, rapeseed oil, black vinegar and garlic round out the pantry. Mapo doufu (麻婆豆腐), twice-cooked pork and fish-fragrant aubergine show the method: oil is taken to a moderate heat, the paste is fried until the oil runs red, and the main ingredient is added only when the seasoning is ready to receive it. Technique in Sichuan is as various as flavour. Stir-frying in the wok includes the dry-fry, in which an ingredient is cooked slowly until its moisture has gone and it is concentrated and chewy, and the quick high-heat fry that keeps vegetables bright. Braising, smoking, steaming with rice flour, cold dressing and slow simmering of stock all have their place, and Dunlop stresses that a proper Sichuan meal balances hot dishes with plain ones and a bowl of soup. The region is also a country of small eating: the teahouse, the noodle stall and the snack sold in the street have long been as much a part of the cuisine as the banquet, and the dishes of dan dan noodles, dumplings in chilli oil and cold noodles belong to that tradition. The cuisine has spread far from its basin, and the cooking of Sichuan restaurants abroad has often been shaped by the tastes of those who eat it. The authority of the home table, however, remains with the careful balance of the traditional flavours, in which numbness, heat, sourness, sweetness and savour are set against one another rather than piled up. That balance, and the discipline of the wok, are what Land of Plenty teaches, and they are what the cook should look for in any Sichuan dish that claims the name.

A Sichuan meal is composed so that no single sensation dominates the table: cold dishes with a spiced or sesame dressing open it, hot and numbing dishes follow, and plain vegetables, soup and rice give the palate rest. Tea is drunk throughout, and the teahouse remains a place of everyday gathering and of small dishes as much as of full meals.