ROUSES_JulyAug2019_Magazine

Top: Traditional Chinese snack, Yibin Burning Noodle Bottom: Sichuan peppercorns

He explained: “Two key ingredients distinguish Sichuan cooking from everywhere else in China: Sichuan peppercorns and Yibin preserved veggie buds. Surprisingly, Sichuan peppercorns are unrelated to chili peppers or black pepper. They are the roasted seed-husks of the prickly-ash tree. And they don’t taste ‘hot’ at all. Instead, they produce a pleasant numbing sensation in your mouth, which allows the delicious taste of chilis — ever-present in Sichuan cuisine — to shine through without murdering your taste buds. “The veggie buds, named after Yibin City, home of the best quality buds, are chopped-up bits of mustard green, which then are fermented and mixed with star anise. Sichuan stir-fried green beans, if they are authentic, must have veggie buds. Ask the waiter if the beans contain ‘ya cai.’ If the answer is no, find another restaurant. (The dish is also sometimes served with minced pork.) “So my favorite Sichuan meal would start with dumplings in hot chili oil (flat, rice-flour dumplings — slippery to eat with chopsticks but very tasty). Then, any meat or shrimp stir-fried with peppercorns. And green beans with ya cai and minced pork as the vegetable.” Glynn has another rule of thumb about picking a good Sichuan (or Hunan or Cantonese) restaurant if you’re in an unfamiliar city, or if you’re one of those tourists who just doesn’t want to bother with guidebooks even as you cruise through a fabled Chinatown like New York’s. Look in the restaurant window; if it’s full of locals, try to get a seat and ask the waiter what everyone is eating. I offer a caveat to that. Like Cajuns who make a fetish over poule d’eau (pool doo) gumbo, which is an acquired taste for most of the rest of the world, Sichuan cuisine has a wild and exotic side. I recently dined in Chicago’s modest Chinatown and, perusing the dishes pasted on the window of one such restaurant, I discovered among the offerings pork intestines with fresh garlic and pork brain in spicy sauce. I decided to keep moving. Even I have limits.

New York ’ s historic Chinatown

Everybody wanted to tag along and I often did (but not five days a week.) We had some extremely memorable meals at places like Joe’s Shanghai, famed for its soup dumplings and scallion pancakes. (Shanghai cuisine is its own interesting niche, sometimes called “red cooking” for its reliance on pickled ingredients, which give the dishes a shiny look, and thick sauces crafted from soy sauce and sugar.) We also dined frequently at a Cantonese joint called Great New York Noodletown that — despite its tourist-trap name — offers the best Cantonese food I’ve ever eaten. In season, we’d go there to gorge on a dish that I know would go down well in the Gumbo Belt: salt-baked softshell crabs. The sautéed flowering chives side dish was emblematic of the exotic and utterly tasty take on Cantonese that Noodletown offers. (Both Joe’s and Noodletown are still in business.) New York’s Chinatown had a couple of decent Sichuan restau- rants but Glynn — a Sichuan snob in the best sense of the word — knew where the good stuff was. The first was Wu Liang Ye, an old-line midtown eatery tucked into a brownstone and famous for perhaps my personal favorite Sichuan dish: dan dan noodles. This is an interpretation (or perhaps a forerunner of) pasta served up with a meat sauce spiced up with chili oil. The other place Glynn would invite Sichuan acolytes to gather is Land of Plenty, also in mid-town. I asked Glynn what it is about Sichuan that makes him call it the “king” of spicy Chinese food.

26

JULY•AUGUST 2019