In a small and spotless noodle joint in tiny Qingxi village, two giggly young women make us qiaomian, the buckwheat (aka soba) noodles that are a specialty of this region, about 200km southwest of Chengdu.

First, a chunk of thick, yellowy-brown buckwheat dough is pushed through a press into a pot of boiling water.

Once cooked till al dente, the noodles are drained and added to a bowl already containing some boiled cabbage, broth and other flavourings (such as chilli oil and vinegar), and is topped with some squishy wan dou, a bean product sold alongside the tofu in markets, that is a little like well-cooked chickpeas.

The resulting dish was fantastic – simple, hearty flavours, the noodles just the right side of stodgy but also surprisingly light. A perfect start to our Sichuan Pepper Day (move of still to come…)

PS. The girls who made the noodles also called them ‘Zaza’ noodles, which I haven’t been able to find a translation for, but I think refers to the method of pushing dough through a press. Can anyone out there verify my guess?

Ok, so maybe that's going a little far, but still, the two recent Sichuan cuisine feasts I cooked while in the UK certainly made up for in quantity what they lacked in flashy ingredients.

The first was during the　time I spent in my hometown, Hebden Bridge, when I cooked for 17 of my mum's friends. The menu for that evening was:

Cold Dishes
Steamed aubergines in a chilli-oil and black bean sauce
Belly pork slices in a garlic paste sauce
Cucumbers with garlic and vinegar

Hot Dishes
Mapo tofu
Dry-fried green beans
Courgette and egg stir-fry
Beef in a sweet-wheat sauce
Potato and green pepper slivers
Stir-fried spinach

Above is the table before everyone pounced. Because we were so many I decided to serve the food buffet-style; very un-Chinese it's true, but the assortment of dishes did look rather nice all on a plate together.

Clockwise from 9 o'clock are the potato slivers; green beans; tofu; rice; spinach; aubergines; pork; cucumber; courgette and egg; and the beef is in the middle.

To save myself the hassle of cooking 15 plus different dishes I just made double portions of everything; nonetheless, it did still take me almost 4 hours to cook it all, and that was with some help too! It was all totally delicious in the end though, if I do say so myself, and to my relief everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Thankfully the second Sichuan meal I cooked, about 2 weeks later in London, was far less high pressure, being only for 7 people. Same menu, more or less, lazy I know, but very nice it was anyway.

Mmmm...maybe if all else fails I can start up a Sichuan cuisine supper club when I move back to Britain...

Chop Chop Dumpling Restaurant (the Chinese name is much better - 饺子王 translates as 'dumpling king'). Haymarket, Edinburgh.

The Szechuan. Tollcross, Edinburgh.

China Garden. Preston Street, Brighton (you can see the ruined West Pier in the background).

Famous Sichuan. Queen's Road, Brighton (this was definitely not here when I was a student in Brighton!).

Fuzhou Restaurant (Fuzhou is the capital of Fujian province, where many early Chinese immigrants to the UK came from). Chinatown, London.

Young Cheng. Chinatown, London (the Chinese businessmen you can see going into the restaurant were the end few of a very long line - must be a good place...)

Note: I only ate at one of the above restaurants (the Szechuan, more on which still to come), so cannot recommend any of the others!

One of the many delights of my recent visit back to the UK was how much I enjoyed the food. Living in China for two years, it's easy to forget that there is a whole world of other wonderful food beyond the borders of the People's Republic. But though of course I was expecting great things from France and even London, I certainly did not anticipate the foodie heaven than Edinburgh turned out to be...

Edinburgh is one of my favourite cities in Britain, and my connection with it goes back quite a while - I worked there for a month at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2005, and have been back almost every year since. This time, I visiting my great friend Peggy Hughes, who I worked with at the Book Fest and who is now a busy busy bee on the Scottish literati scene. Knowing about my love for food, she and her lovely partner Colin took it upon themselves to give me a one-day food-tour of their city, and in doing so totally turned around my previous favourable-but-not-amazing foodie impression of Edinburgh.

We started at the Edinburgh Farmers' Market, which Peggy, who will herself admit is not the biggest foodie, is nonetheless a huge devotee of due to the infamous Hog Roast. It was a beautiful morning, and what with being festival time as well the market was packed and bustling. While Peggy headed straight to the aforementioned stall,

I chose first to sample the wares of one of the market's success stories, Stoats Porridge. This ain't no ordinary porridge; this is, if such a thing exists, gourmet porridge, exemplified by my own choice of Stoats Cranachan: porridge, fresh rasberries, toasted oats and single cream.

It was sublime, and for me at least, took porridge to whole different level.

Though my hunger was somewhat abated by this oaty delight, I still had room enough left for something I spied at one of the very first stalls - homemade Scotch eggs.

This is no supermarket junk foodstuff, but the real thing - crisp breadcrumbs, surrounding a deliciously savoury sausage meat mixture, itself wrapped around a huge, rich duck's egg.

It really was fantastic. Years ago I heard a radio program about real Scotch eggs; it must have piqued my interest for I remembered it at the market, and was so excited to try something that is usually pretty gross, but done properly is just brilliant.

And the fun didn't stop there! After the market we went for a little peek at Edinburgh Books, the magical shop that hosts some of the events at Peggy's festival, West Port; and after that, a trip to my old favourite the Mosque Kitchen.

This was but an hour or so after the market however, and I really wasn't hungry enough for a full meal. Luckily, rather than miss out on one of the best (and cheapest) meals in the city, I had the inspired idea of asking them to serve my dal in the tupperware box I'd brought along to the market for any takeaway purchases (that I didn't end up making).

The lovely mosque folks obliged; my dal was totally yummy, and even yummier eaten an hour or two later when my appetite had returned.

But it didn't end there, oh no. Much, much later in the day and accompanied by other friends, I made a trip to the wonderful, inspirational Susie's Wholefood Diner, where I ate many a delicious meal during my various visits to Edinburgh, and to where I was eager to return.

The friends I was with were, in fact, rather reluctant to eat at Susie's, and I had to insist that they would like it. Once they'd tasted the fantastic, homecooked vegetarian food however, they were of course won over (though you will have to imagine it for yourself because the dining room was too dark to photograph!).

Finally, close to midnight, it was time for my last supper: wonton soup at the Szechuan restaurant under Peggy and Colin's apartment. I won't go into too much detail about it here, because I will be doing so elsewhere soon, but needless to say, it was perhaps the perfect end to a perfect day. I guess a foodie is a foodie, wherever she is.

Corn cob husks used for building the foundations of a new house. Qingxi Village, Southwest Sichuan