Szechuan pepper

[redbird]

Since I can't eat capsicum-spiced food anymore, cattitude and I have been experimenting, in a low-key sort of way. One thing he wanted to try was Szechuan peppercorns, but it took a while to find them. We were on Canal Street last weekend and L wanted to show marykaykare and sneerpout a Chinese supermarket. Being a market, they had spices, which included big bags of these, so we got some.

This evening, Cattitude made his more-or-less-usual lentil stew: lentils, sausage or leftover cooked meat (in this case, chicken sausages), onions, carrots, cooked in chicken broth. He added a half dozen of the Szechuan peppercorns to the pot.

Conclusion: I think I like them, and they are entirely safe for me to eat. More experimentation is clearly in order. I don't think they will entirely replace the capsicum I can no longer eat, nor are they likely to displace ginger or even horseradish in my affections, but they may restore a bit of what I'm missing. But part of why they won't displace horseradish is that the shape/preparation is so different: horseradish is something I can smear on cold roast beef, and these are something that can be simmered in stew for an hour.

Comments

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

I now have a copy of Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (guess which movie whump saw last weekend) so I should be able to sort out the order in which to cook that stew recipie, which looks very tasty.

[redbird]

If it's not in Child, I can ask cattitude.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

It's a very straightforward and malleable thing. Brown some cut-up fatty meat (The original recipe called for lamb breast, I mostly use chicken sausages, 1/4-3/4 lb. is plausible. Non-fatty meat doesn't work as well unless you use bacon fat to cook it in.), remove, cook a diced onion and some garlic in the leftover fat until nearly transparent, add a diced carrot (and, if you like, a diced celery stalk, or any of a number of other things) and cook three more minutes, add the meat, 14 oz. chicken broth or broth-water mix or water, 1/2 cup lentils, and such spices as seem good (almost always including some rosemary). Cover and simmer for 55 minutes. If you like, add peas or short-cooking spices five minutes before it's done. I use a dutch oven, but a covered pot should work. The recipe this is based on is from Cooking for Two Today by Hewitt and Blanchard, a book I use a lot.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

Oh, this only works with normal whole brownish lentils. The split bright orange ones fail miserably.