I’m continually amazed at how much variety there is in China. Towns just a few hours apart will have some produce in common, but what will be most noticeable are the differences.

This was exactly how it was when I and fellow foodie Reed went to Yibin last month, which is only about 3 hours away from Chengdu. We particularly felt the differences in several narrow streets in the downtown that were lined with vendors, where I saw many things that I’ve never found in Chengdu. This fermented fresh tofu for example...

...these trumpet-shaped mushrooms...

...and this bewildering array of pickles.

I also really liked this market because of how beautiful the food was – amazing, really, considering what a wet and miserable day it was.

More posts on our Yibin adventures coming soon...

One of the (many) things I lament that is being lost in China’s rush towards modernity is street food. In Chengdu just over a year ago, I feared that the end was nigh for this city’s once legendary street food, as, in preparation for a nationwide ‘Most Civilized City’ competition, the authorities systematically cleared the streets of anything considered luohou, or ‘backward’. Their hit-list targeted fruit and vegetable vendors, outdoor seating at restaurants, and, most of all, street food – all things that I love most about China.

Luckily, it seemed that the city’s powers-that-be were only ‘cleaning up’ for the sake of the competition, as things got a lot better after the judges had come through town. Though it’s possible now to find the occasional snack on the streets of Chengdu, usually the only reliable place to get a wide variety of street food is in over-priced tourist areas, where the quality isn’t very food to boot. To get really good street food in Sichuan, you have to go either to an out-of-town university campus, or to a smaller city – and one of the latter that I’ve found to have excellent street food is Yibin, where I went a couple of weekends ago.

Come nightfall in Yibin, a whole street in the centre of town is closed to traffic. This is then filled by vendors of everything and anything, and, best of all, street food.

There was so much street food, in fact, that we didn't get to try all of it. Things un-eaten included some imaginatively presented bubble tea...

...strange, gooey sweets made in small ceramic cups, popular with kids...

...and a gorgeous looking sha guo (claypot) selection that warranted not one, but two photos.

But perhaps the biggest food revelation of the evening was at this small stall.

This is chou doufu, that most controversial of soybean products, commonly known in English as ‘Stinky Tofu’. I’ve never tried the kind sold in Chengdu, but this wasn’t your average chou doufu, and it had none of the overpowering aroma characteristic of the dish. It was, in fact, the closest thing to cheese that I’ve eaten in China – creamy, tangy and totally delicious.

Served with a chilli powder and ground peanut dip, the affable vendor told us that the tofu we were eating was 7 days old, but that he also had some that was 10 days old. Of course we had to try some, and boy, could you taste the extra 3 days. It was rather a bit too intense for me, and so I only ate a little bit – but oh how I wished that I could get the younger stuff in Chengdu.

More Yibin adventures coming soon...

Here is the second installment of my monthly column in Chengdoo Citylife Magazine, 'Your Chuancai Cupboard'. This month: Sichuan Pepper.

Sichuan pepper, or huājiāo （花椒） in Chinese, is one of the most loved, and simultaneously, one of the most hated of Chinese spices. Some people abhor its ‘soapy’ aroma, and pick out the peppercorns from a dish with distaste; others positively seek them out to enjoy their characteristic numbing flavour to the fullest.

Sichuan pepper appears in many of the most famous Sichuanese dishes, and its flavour is perhaps the most characteristic aspect of the region’s cooking – others, such as Hunan and Guizhou, use just as much chilli, but none use huajiao with such a liberal hand as the Sichuanese. It is also worth noting that huajiao’s appearance in Sichuan cuisine far predates that of chillies.

Today, Sichuan pepper is most frequently fried with dried chillies, a method that brings out its smoky tones (for example in Kung Pao Chicken), but it is also dry-fried and ground to a powder (as in Mapo Tofu), and even occasionally used raw (as in Jiao Ma Ji Pian – chicken slices in a Sichuan pepper sauce). Sichuan pepper is also one of the ingredients in the famous (and highly variable) Chinese ‘five-spice’ mixture, and is also used in various other Asian cuisines, including Japanese, Korean and Indonesian.

In spite of its name, Sichuan pepper is in fact related neither to black pepper nor chilli, but is the outer husk of the fruit of the prickly ash tree, Zanthoxylum. This somewhat stunted tree (thorny branches bare in the winter, covered by dark green, pale-edged leaves in the summer), produces its harvest in August: slightly knobbly, dusky pink balls, gathered in busy clusters – a stunning contrast to their surrounding dark leaves.

Qingxi village in Hanyuan County (about 300km south-west of Chengdu) is where the most prized and famous Sichuan pepper is grown. Its history here is long and illustrious; it is mentioned in the foundational Book of Songs, thought to be compiled by Confucius himself, and Qingxi’s Sichuan pepper was for many centuries sent in tribute to the imperial court of China’s emperors.

When I visited Qingxi, only a few weeks before the harvest, the trees were positively dripping with the peppercorns, and their lemony aroma reached me before I was even close enough to touch them. I learnt from villagers that once picked, some of the peppercorns would be used fresh to make huajiao-flavoured oil; the rest would be left to dry in the sun, laid out in bamboo baskets, until the skin has cracked to reveal the shiny black seeds within.

The seeds would then be shaken from the husks and discarded, and the leftover husks are thus ready for use in cooking.

You too can make the arduous journey to buy Sichuan pepper from the very village where it is produced, but for those not quite as huajiao-obsessed as me, just try to buy a brand from Hanyuan County. I also recommend buying Sichuan pepper in pre-sealed packets, not loose, as its flavour diminishes rapidly if not kept in a sealed container. For those not in China, Sichuan pepper can be bought online from specialist suppliers (such as the Cool Chile Company), and for British readers, is available in most supermarkets in the Bart’s spices range.

As mentioned earlier, Sichuan pepper is delicious fried with dried chillies; this method, called qiang in Chinese, can be used in combination with all manner of fresh vegetables – I like it particularly with slithers of round courgette (zucchini). But perhaps the most famous of Sichuanese dishes that uses Sichuan pepper is Mapo Tofu, a recipe for which I’ve adapted from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan Cookery and which you can find below.

Mapo Tofu 麻婆豆腐

1 block of tofu
3-4 spring onions (scallions)
Vegetable or peanut oil
150g minced beef (optional)
2 tablespoons chilli-bean paste (doubanjiang)
1 tablespoon fermented soy beans (dou chi), rinsed and drained
200ml water
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1 teaspoon of cornstarch mixed with 1 tablespoon of water
1 teaspoon Sichuan pepper

1. Cut the tofu into 2cm cubes and leave to steep in very hot, salted water. Slice the spring onions into 3cm-long chunks. Dry-fry the Sichuan pepper in a hot wok until smoking, tip out into a pestle-and-mortar and then grind to a fine powder (you can use pre-ground Sichuan pepper, but it won’t taste as good).
2. If using the beef, pour about 2 tablespoons of oil into a wok and heat. Once smoking, add the minced beef and fry until a little brown and set aside.
3. Add another tablespoon or so of oil, heat and add the chilli-bean paste. Fry for about 30 seconds, taking care not to let it burn, and then add the fermented soy beans and cook for another 30 seconds.
4. Pour in the water, add the sugar, soy sauce and salt to taste and now add the drained tofu cubes. Simmer for about 5 minutes, to allow the tofu to absorb the flavours.
5. Add the spring onions (scallions) and gently stir in. Once they are just cooked, add the starch-and-water mixture to thicken the sauce. Finally, pour everything into a serving dish, scatter with the cooked minced beef and the ground Sichuan pepper and serve.

Last week, Cam and I had the brilliant experience of visiting the factory of a local company, who produce all manner of traditional Chinese cooking ingredients and foodstuffs. The visit was to research the method of making dou chi (fermented black beans) for my next column in Chengdoo Magazine, which you will see here soon. In the meantime, here are a few photos to whet your appetite.

Dried soy beans, the main ingredient of dou chi.

The soy beans, post soaking and steaming, mid-way through the fermentation process.

The dou chi getting a stir.

The almost-finished product.

We also got to see the company’s doufu ru (fermented tofu) being made, of which they are justly proud. First, the tofu itself is prepared.

The tofu is then left in earthenware containers, called shaigang, to ferment for many months.

Finally, it is mixed with a spicy sauce, packaged and ready to eat.

More on dou chi, and the wonderful Mr Jiang who organized our visit, coming soon…

I have a confession to make. Before I came to live in China, I wasn't a fan of tofu. Tofu-lovers, please withhold your wrath if you will. Now, of course, I can't get enough of the stuff, but back in the UK everything I made with tofu turned out a disaster (like the time I tried to stir-fry silken tofu, for example...)

But living in China, as in so many ways, has changed my cooking habits completely; not long after arriving here I had a kind of tofu-epiphany (if you can imagine that), and I am now a fully-paid up member of the Tofu Fan Club.

Perhaps this turnaround was in part due to the incredibly wide variety of tofu products available here compared to the rubbish selection in the UK (all health food shop tastelessness as far as I could tell). Go to any market in Chengdu and you will find many stalls/stores that specialize in tofu, and positively brim with the stuff; smooth, fresh blocks (0n the far left in the photo below), slightly crumbly and more fragrant ones (to the right of the latter), deep-fried bite-sized cubes, millimeter-thin tofu 'skin', and the kind that stars in the recipe below, 'dry' or smoked tofu (in the photo, all the darker ones), which comes in many shapes and sizes (including that rather phallic one in the middle there...)

For a while, vegetarian Cam refused to touch this stuff, saying that it tastes too much like meat. Eventually however, he succumbed to it's smoky, chewy charms, and it's now a regular on our table. The following recipe (picture at the top) is based on a dish I had at a very modest eatery one time for lunch. The smoothness of the tofu contrasts wonderfully with the crispness of the celery, and the Sichuan pepper and chillies lend it that awesome mala (numbing and spicy) kick.

Smoked Tofu and Celery

Serves 2-3 as part of a family-style meal

Around 100g smoked tofu
Several sticks of celery
3-5 spring onions
4-8 dried chillies (depending on how spicy you like it!), cut in half and seeds discarded
1 teaspoon of whole Sichuan pepper
1 tablespoon of rapeseed oil
2 teaspoons of sesame oil
Salt to taste

1. Wash, dry, and cut the tofu into roughly 5 cm x 1 cm 'fingers'. Wash the celery, discard the leaves and cut into same shape as the tofu. Wash the spring onions, discard the outer layer and then cut into the same shape as the tofu and the celery (I hope you're noticing a pattern here!)

2. Heat the rapeseed oil in a wok, then add the chillies and Sichuan pepper.

3. When the chillies and peppers are starting to get fragrant, add the tofu, celery and spring onions.

4. Stir-fry over a high heat for about 3 minutes, or until all the ingredients are piping hot.

5. Season with salt, turn off the heat, add the sesame oil and then serve.