40 Fun Facts About Sichuan Cuisine

Which fiery Sichuan dish, born in a nineteenth-century Chengdu restaurant, has a name meaning pockmarked grandma's?

Mapo tofu is named for Mrs Chen, the pockmarked cook said to have created it; diners reportedly ordered by weight and watched their portion being made.

Which Sichuan stir-fry of diced poultry and peanuts is believed to be named after Qing governor Ding Baozhen's title?

Kung Pao chicken takes its name from Gongbao, or palace guardian, and during the Cultural Revolution the imperial-sounding dish was renamed simply spicy chicken.

Which country banned imports of Sichuan peppercorns from 1968 to 2005 for fear of a crop disease?

United States regulators feared the shipments could carry citrus canker, since the peppercorn shrub belongs to the same plant family as oranges and lemons.

Which fast-food chain created a Szechuan dipping sauce in 1998 to promote Disney's Mulan?

McDonald's made the sauce for its chicken nuggets, and it returned to fame nearly twenty years later when the cartoon Rick and Morty made a running joke of it.

Sichuan and Chongqing are estimated to account for about 70 percent of China's consumption of which meat?

Rabbit is much more popular in Sichuan than anywhere else in China, even though pork is overwhelmingly the region's most common meat.

Which Sichuan street snack takes its name from the shoulder pole that walking vendors used to carry their baskets?

Dandan noodles were sold by street pedlars who hung the noodles from one end of the pole and the sauce from the other, cheap enough that the name stuck.

Sichuan's yuxiang sauce, served on shredded pork and eggplant, is named for the aroma of which food it never contains?

Fish is missing from the recipe: the name means fish fragrance, yet the sweet, sour and garlicky sauce holds no seafood and is rarely even served on it.

Chili peppers, now essential to Sichuan cooking, were first cultivated in which country long before reaching Asia?

Mexico grew chilies some 6,000 years ago, yet they reached Sichuan kitchens only a few centuries ago, joining the far older native peppercorn.

Which Sichuan dish of glass noodles and minced pork takes its name from what the finished plate is said to resemble?

Ants climbing a tree pictures the specks of meat as ants and the noodles as twigs; the softened strands go into the wok to soak up the sauce.

Which Chinese word, joining the characters for numbing and spicy, names the signature flavour of Sichuan hot pot?

Mala pairs the tingle of Sichuan peppercorns with the burn of dried chilies, and its strong flavours once helped hide the smell of cheap offal.

Which Sichuan classic of sliced belly meat, garlic sprouts and chili bean paste is called huiguorou in Chinese?

Twice-cooked pork is boiled first, then sliced and stir-fried, which is why its Chinese name means meat returned to the wok.

Which cold Sichuan street dish of shredded poultry is named after the wooden stick used to pound the meat tender?

Bang bang chicken comes from bàng, the Chinese word for stick; the popular story that the name copies the noise of the pounding is thought unlikely.

Fuqi feipian, a cold and spicy Sichuan dish of thinly sliced offal, is named after which pair of people?

A husband and wife, Guo Zhaohua and Zhang Tianzheng, made the snack famous in 1930s Chengdu, and despite the lung in its Chinese name it rarely contains any.

Chen Kenichi, whose father brought Sichuan cooking to Japan, was the Chinese-food champion of which TV contest?

Iron Chef kept Chen in his post for its entire run, the only one of its resident champions to manage that. His father, Chen Kenmin, was born in Sichuan and moved to Japan in 1952.

Which gathering places, found all over Chengdu, are where locals play mahjong and even have their ears cleaned?

Teahouses in the city range from ornate halls with bamboo furniture to plain modern rooms, and the larger ones lay on Sichuan opera for their customers.

Sichuan's numbing hot pot is traced to riverside workers who laboured along which of China's great waterways?

Yangtze River workers wanted cheap, warming meals, so vendors boiled tripe and other bargain cuts in spiced broth; restaurants took up the dish only in the 1930s.

Which seasoning blend, named for a number, mixes ground Sichuan pepper with star anise, cloves, cinnamon and fennel?

Five-spice powder is said to reflect the five traditional Chinese elements, and a rarer cousin with eight more ingredients is sold as thirteen-spice powder.

Chaoshou, the Sichuan dumplings whose name means folded hands, are a regional form of which Chinese dumpling?

Wonton wrappers are folded here into two points, one crossed over the other, and it is said you can order a bowl in Sichuan just by crossing your arms.

Suanla fen, the hot and sour noodles sold on Sichuan streets, get their sharp tang from which ingredient?

Rice vinegar supplies the sourness and chili oil the heat, and a street vendor can hand over a finished bowl two or three minutes after taking the order.

Which fermented paste of broad beans and chilies has been called the soul of Sichuan cuisine?

Doubanjiang of the best-known kind ferments under sunlight, often for more than three years, until it turns reddish brown and deeply savoury.

Settlers from which nearby province, also famed for chili heat, carried their cooking into war-emptied Sichuan?

Hunan migrants arrived after wars had cut Sichuan's population by about three-quarters, and their dry, purely hot style still contrasts with Sichuan's numbing heat.

Which hot pot chain, founded in Jianyang in Sichuan, is known for treating its customers to free snacks and manicures?

Haidilao, whose name means scooping the sea floor, began as a single restaurant opened by Zhang Yong and three partners with just 8,000 yuan.

Which English cook trained at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine and later wrote Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper?

Fuchsia Dunlop went to China to research ethnic minorities but stayed on for a chef's course, and several publishers rejected her first cookbook as too regional.

Zha cai, the salty preserved knob shredded into Sichuan noodles and soups, is the swollen stem of which plant?

Mustard stems for zha cai are salted, pressed and dried, then rubbed with chili paste and left to ferment in earthenware jars.

A traditional Chongqing hot pot gets the richness of its fiery broth from which rendered animal fat?

Beef tallow is stir-fried and boiled for a long time with chilies, garlic, bean paste and spices to make the seasoning base that flavours the soup.

Salt from Sichuan's ancient brine wells naturally lacks which element, a gap once blamed for goiter in the region?

Iodine was missing from the salt drawn from Sichuan's wells and springs, which led to goiter problems in the region before the twentieth century.

In the traditional Four Great Traditions of Chinese cooking, Sichuan cuisine represents which part of China?

The West is Sichuan's corner in a scheme that gives Shandong the north, Guangdong the south and Huaiyang the east; a later list names eight great cuisines.

Sichuan cooking has three regional substyles and a fourth, meat-free style tied to which religion?

Buddhism gives the vegetarian style its name, while the other three are tied to places: Chengdu and Leshan, the towns of southern Sichuan, and Chongqing.

Shuizhu, the Sichuan method behind so-called water-boiled meat, ends by pouring which liquid over the dish?

Hot oil, heated almost to smoking, is poured over a topping of dried chili, Sichuan pepper and garlic, so the gently poached meat arrives fiery rather than plain.

Which part of the Sichuan pepper plant is dried and sold as the tingling spice?

The fruit husk is the whole spice: once the pods are dried, the seeds and stems are discarded, and the husks are used whole or finely ground.

Researchers liken the tingle that Sichuan pepper leaves in the mouth to which physical sensation?

A fast vibration of about 50 hertz is the closest match, since the pepper's sanshool compound triggers nerve endings that normally sense touch.

Huajiao, the Chinese name for the numbing Sichuan peppercorn, literally translates into English as which phrase?

Flower pepper is the literal meaning, while mountain pepper is what Japan calls its own close relative, sanshō, the plant that gave the tingling molecule sanshool its name.

Guaiwei, a Sichuan seasoning that blends nutty, sour, sweet, salty and numbing notes, has a name meaning what?

Strange taste, also rendered exotic taste, is one of about two dozen recognised Sichuan flavour profiles, and it is rarely used outside the province's own cooking.

In Qing-dynasty Sichuan, which everyday preserved food is said to have been given as part of a bride's dowry?

Pickled vegetables are fermented here in a seasoned brine and kept shut, and Sichuan's version is the one most Chinese mean by the generic name.

Chili oil, a staple condiment of Sichuan cooking, is known there by a Chinese name that translates as what?

Red oil, or hong you, is often made with erjingtiao, a Sichuan chili of only medium heat that is prized for its deep colour and robust fragrance.

Sweet bean sauce, a dark paste used in Sichuan stir-fries, is despite its name made mainly from which ingredient?

Wheat flour makes up about 95 percent of the fermented mix, with beans only a small remainder, and the same paste is served with Peking duck.

Douchi, the salty fermented nuggets stirred into classic Sichuan sauces, are made from which ingredient?

Black soybeans are left to grow mould and then salted, producing what is counted as the oldest-known food made from soya.

The translucent thread noodles of Sichuan cooking are often made with the starch of which legume?

Mung bean starch gives the noodles their glassy look and their other English name, bean threads; sweet potato starch is the common alternative in China.

Zhangcha duck, a Sichuan banquet dish, is hot-smoked over tea and the leaves of which fragrant evergreen?

Camphor gives the bird half its Chinese name, and after smoking it is steamed, deep-fried until crisp and eaten tucked into clam-shaped buns.

Which southern Sichuan city, nicknamed the Salt Capital for its ancient wells, anchors a fiery regional cooking style?

Zigong has drawn salt from wells since the Eastern Han dynasty, and its own genre of spicy dishes is known as yanbang cuisine.