I enjoy cooking. I also enjoy Chinese food of the Sichuan (or Szechuan, or Szechwan) variety. A few months ago, after yet another disappointing DC Chinese restaurant experience, I decided I needed to learn how to cook Sichuan food on my own. I ordered Fuschia Dunlop’s book Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking
I do not pretend to be an expert. I don’t know much about the science of cooking, I don’t pretend to have a grasp on any sort of authenticity of the recipes I cook, I just know what I like. I’m sure there will be things that I get wrong. But it’s a good place for me to keep track of what I’m doing, what I’ve learnt, what I like, things I’ve tried, and things I want to try.
My goals with this blog are to:
- Try and document most recipes in Dunlop’s book
- Try and review every metro-accessible Chinese restaurant in Washington, DC
- Find the perfect pepper to use that I can actually buy for the dishes I make
- Try to recreate a dish that was on the specials menu at Yangming in the fall (Chongqing crispy cubed chicken with peppers was the basic gist of the dish)
- Share information about my experiences so that other beginners can benefit from them
- Find another good Sichuan cookbook, even if I have to translate it from Chinese myself
And so it begins…