In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been bumping into recipes with sichuan peppercorns everywhere I look. First, it was the Crispy Sichuan Chile Chicken in MILK STREET: TUESDAY NIGHTS, then it was a recipe from Danielle Centoni’s upcoming FRIED RICE book, and then, it was the Sichuan-Style Peanut Noodles from Diana Kuan’s RED HOT KITCHEN.
I heard Diana’s interview on Eat Your Words a few months back and thought about getting the book, but never got around to it. This week, I bumped into her recipe for Sichuan-Style Peanut Noodles on Chitra Agrawal’s ABCD’s of Cooking. It calls for making Sichuan chile oil first, makes sense, given the the theme of the book, and luckily I’d done that for the other fried rice recipe I made. It’s the combo of the chile oil, the black vinegar, the ginger and garlic that really make these noodles stand out. I mean, other versions I’ve made in the past are dominated by the peanut butter and soy sauce. And they’re fine, but sometimes a little gloppy. It’s not a dish I think to make all that often.
That’s gonna change with Diana’s recipe. Of course, this is a riff on her original. I always put way more vegetables into things, so instead of just shiitakes, the bok choy and cucumber it calls for, I skipped the shrooms and added a small red bell pepper and about 6 oz. of sugar snap peas into the mix. And a poached chicken breast. Tofu would be great, too.
The important part, though, is the peanut sauce. Don’t just buy a bottle of chile oil off the shelf at the market. It’s a totally different animal. The one I picked up was terrible, just soybean oil and chiles. And boy, can you taste the soybean oil. The real deal asks you to add star anise, bay leaves and cinnamon, and it’s 100% worth the small time investment.
RECIPE: Sichuan-Style Peanut Noodles from RED HOT KITCHEN by Diana Kuan
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