Sichuan Pork and Peanut Noodles

My love for the Sichuan peppercorn knows no bounds. They are these little parcels of chemical magic that make your tongue buzz a bit before it starts to go numb. When I put it like that they maybe don’t sound as appealing as they actually are. The real beauty is they give a very specific flavor to whatever you’re cooking that absolutely can’t be substituted or replicated with anything else. There aren’t many ingredients that are as powerful and specific so finding more ways to enjoy them is always fun.

Often when I’m in the kitchen I find myself wondering how a thing came into being (angel food cake) or who was the first person out in the wilds of another time rooting around in the forest or meadow or ocean picking things up, putting them in their mouth and hoping for the best. We just don’t do that anymore. We don’t even eat things that are past their best before dates even if our eyes and nose tell us they’re fine. I’m not advocating we all start eating raw pufferfish for breakfast but I think an adventurous spirit serves the betterment of humanity. Will Sichuan peppercorns better humanity? I don’t know but we definitely won’t know if we don’t try. We can at least honor that first person long ago who put one in their mouth and thought “Interesting. I can do something with this.”

I keep an expanding file folder full of recipes I want to try and it’s expanded about as far as it can go. Every once in awhile I go through it to find an interesting detour from our usual day to day fare or pretend I’m going to throw some away. I was thrilled to find an old Waitrose recipe card that I picked up in the store in February 2018 for these noodles. Not surprisingly the recipe card was sponsored by Bart to highlight their (probably new-ish at the time) spices Sichuan peppercorn and star anise. From its very debut it seems I was intrigued.

With quite a bit of experience making the mapo tofu I had to work hard to follow the recipe and not just make it a version of that but with peanut butter because I don’t often have tahini in the house. I was very reserved and now I have TWO easy, very different dishes that both use my beloved Sichuan peppercorns.