Sichuan Satan Salad

If normal peppers are the drugs to which I am horribly addicted, then Sichuan peppercorns are psychedelics.  While most peppers produce some sort of burning or tingling on the Scoville spectrum, Sichuan have some of the weirdest goddamn effects I've ever felt.  Imagine a burning, but not so much in heat as in numbness.  And it's not really a numbness, but some whacked out narcotic tingling sensation.  And it leaves your mouth not reeling, but seemingly cleansed by some foreign antiseptic, and wondering just what sort of bastard botanical graced its naughty parts. 

It's literally like having your taste buds abducted and probed by extraterrestrial beings.  If you eat too many of the damn things, your tongue will actually feel hungover, all numb and shit, much like your body after alien abduction and/or too much drink.

When I ran across these in an Indian store over here on Nevsky Prospekt, I picked up a big ass bag of them.  I had previously had them in some shitty overpriced restaurant in Beijing, so I knew what I was in for, but my mind could not clearly recall the sensation, as there are pretty much no parallels with which to compare the glory that is Sichuan peppercorns.  I spent the better part of the afternoon offering them to random co-workers, and getting a good snicker out of those who didn't know me well enough to not take random food from me.  I ate a good deal of them myself, crunching up the pinkish-purple pods and savouring the waves of successive sensation that washed over my tongue. 

Apparently, these things grow in the highlands of China, Bhutan, and Nepal, where pretty much nothing else grows, but they go really well with chilis, soy sauce, ginger, and garlic.  I couldn't find a good recipe for them, so I just got a bit touchy-feely with my spice cabinet and some veggies, and this salad just came into being, summoned as much by my will as by incantations to the Tibetan spirits trapped in the peppercorns themselves.

I call it the Sichuan Satan Salad, because I'm sure that if you served this to any branch of religious fanatics, they wouldn't understand the foreign sensations, pleasurable yet unnable, and would burn you as witches and heretics for giving it to them.  It's funny how things that are foreign, but highly enjoyable, usually whip prudes and dogmatic pricks into an absolute frenzy. 

Ingredients

For the salad:

½ a large head of Chinese cabbage, finely shredded

1 chili pepper, seeded and finely diced

¼ cup ground roasted peanuts

2-3 scallions, finely chopped

1/3 bunch of cilantro, finely chopped

For the sauce:

1 teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns

2 large cloves of garlic, chopped

1/2 tablespoon Chopped ginger

1 heaping teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 ½ tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar

2 tablespoons sunflower oil*

½ a lime

1. Put the cabbage, the chili pepper, the peanuts, and finally, the scallions and cilantro, into a bowl.  It will look like a normal, tossed salad.  But you will toss it at the table.

2. Combine the peppercorns, garlic, ginger, red pepper, and sugar in a mortar.  Grind it up with a pestle, until it becomes a paste. 

3. Add the soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and oil to the paste, and mix thoroughly.

4. Pour over the salad.  Squeeze the lime over the top.  Toss it at the table, in plain view of your guests, so they know what you're all about.

Delicious! 

*I use unrefined sunflower oil, because it's got a delicious flavour, and reminds me of my good old days in Kurgan, Russia.  Seasame oil would probably be more authentically Asian, but I wouldn't recommend olive oil or some unrefined, unscented shit—that stuff's for wimps.