• StevieHolland on April 07, 2014

  Awesome cookbook. Here's my attempt at a few recipes... http://shrestaurants.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Book%20-%20Sichuan%20Cookery

Notes about Recipes in this book

• Pock-marked Mother Chen's beancurd (Ma po dou fu)

  • jlg84 on April 28, 2016

    This is a fantastic recipe, yielding an extremely authentic version of the dish. I have made it countless times, and even Chinese friends say it's among the best renditions they've tasted.

  • erin g on February 06, 2011

    When using baby leeks, I add them earlier than the recipe calls for, to cook them down somewhat.

• Port and white radish soup (Lian guo tang)

  • FionaC on July 17, 2022

    The title of the recipe is Pork and Radish Soup

• Fried eggs with tomatoes (Fan qie chao dan)

  • erin g on February 06, 2011

    I think this recipe benefits from a shake of sugar on the tomatoes as they cook, and a bit of chicken broth or maggi powder stirred into the eggs.

• Spicy cucumber salad (Qiang huang gua)

  • erin g on February 09, 2011

    If you're making a full Chinese meal for a crowd, this is useful as it can be made ahead of time.

  • Ro_ on May 05, 2020

    This was nice, I liked the fact that the cucumbers were just barely cooked and served cooled down a bit. It was however very very spicy, I used about two thirds of a cucumber and five deseeded dried red chillies, which was a bit too much.

• Coral-like snow lotus (Shan hu xue lian)

  • erin g on February 09, 2011

    A good, simple cold dish. Serve it with peanuts and spicy cucumber salad for a small cold dish course.

• Strange-flavour chicken (Guai wei ji si)

  • KarinaFrancis on December 29, 2013

    Love this! It explodes with flavour and is super simple, if you feel really lazy you can use BBQ chicken and it's ready in less than 15 minutes. I make this a lot.

• Gong Bao chicken with peanuts (Gong Bao ji ding)

  • KarinaFrancis on April 14, 2013

    This is delicious! I used chicken thighs instead of breast and it was moist and juicy. Next time I might add more sichuan pepper.

  • Ladyredspecs on January 26, 2014

    Great recipe, needs no adjustment for us!

  • Agaillard on October 04, 2015

    I love it! This is the first recipe I made in that book and i still have a soft spot for it :)

  • Ro_ on September 15, 2020

    I really enjoyed this dish, and will make it again. I stuck to the recipe, though left out the sichuan chillies and just used some chilli flakes instead.

  • ashallen on July 20, 2021

    Loaded with wonderful, intense flavors - loved it and will definitely make it again! I don't handle chili-heat very well, so I used 3 chili de arbol (seeds removed, but not ribs) versus the handful of dried chilies specified in the recipe. Despite that cutback and my not-super-fresh Sichuan peppercorns, the dish was still at the edge of being too hot for me! Still very delicious, though, and the sugar in the sauce helps balance the heat.

• Fish-fragrant aubergines (Yu xiang qie zi)

  • KarinaFrancis on May 04, 2014

    Delicious! It's everything good about Szechuan cooking hot, sweet and full of flavour. I wok fried the eggplant instead of deep frying and it still turned out great

  • Frenchfoodie on June 23, 2019

    So so good and I’m not even an aubergine fan normally. They are rich, deeply flavoured and chilli warm.

• Traditional dan dan noodles (Dan dan mian)

  • KarinaFrancis on January 28, 2014

    I've made both versions of Dan Dan noodles from this book and prefer this one. I only used 1 tablespoon of chilli oil and drizzled a little sesame oil in at the very end. It is hot, spicy and delicious. Came together in about 15 minutes which is perfect for a weeknight dinner.

  • metacritic on January 10, 2021

    This is great. I like the recipe here better than the recipe in Every Grain...The reduced amount of ya cai means a less salty dish. The sesame paste adds depth that I really like, even if its not original to early versions of the dish.

• Xie Laoban's dan dan noodles (Niu rou dan dan mian)

  • KarinaFrancis on December 29, 2013

    These noodles are spicy and delicious. Not hard to make, only suggestion is to cut back a little on the dark soy, it can be a little salty.

  • metacritic on March 10, 2022

    This recipe proved great. This version of the recipe is, I think, slightly different from the one in Every Grain of Rice. Where before I thought the recipe as I made it in EGOR was fine but not as good as her staple dan dan noodles recipe, this one is at least as good. I will make this version again, for sure, whenever I have beef rather than pork. It is light, spicy, and absolutely delicious.

• Cauliflower with smoky bacon (La rou shao hua cai)

  • Agaillard on May 14, 2016

    I tried this today for lunch as I was looking to try more dishes from the Fushia Dunlop book and had some leftover cauliflower and streaky bacon. It was surprising as the dish did not strike me at all as Chinese - I mean it does not use any typical chinese ingrédients. Yet again, it does not seem to be really European either, it would not have come to my mind to cook cauliflower that way. Anyway, it was OK and a new way to use up cauliflower.

• Spicy noodles with soft beancurd (Dou hua mian)

  • Agaillard on February 10, 2022

    That was a lot of firsts for me! First time testing or handling soft beancurd or zha cai or Bombay mix :) I was intrigued by the odour of zha cai that kind of grossed me out a little bit, but finally tasted all right, and I found soft beancurd too soft and breakable and quite bland, even mixed with the noodles and sauce. That might have been me not knowing what I was doing :) Overall, I still ate the dish, and I like the sauce!

• Steamed pork and courgette dumpllings (Nan gua zheng jiao)

  • Frenchfoodie on July 19, 2018

    This hot water/lard wrapper recipe is great, so easy to work with and get nice and thin. Not tried with this filling.

  • Ro_ on September 13, 2021

    Loved these. First time I made my own dough, the method seemed weird but it worked! I made these ahead of time and stored in the steamer in fridge until ready, they came out perfectly. Very tasty.

• Pot-sticker dumplings with chicken stock (Ji shi guo tie)

  • Frenchfoodie on July 19, 2018

    Seriously good, pastry nice and easy and comes together well, filling tasty - even with stock from a cube.

• Tai bai chicken (Tai bai ji)

  • Frenchfoodie on July 19, 2018

    Tasty though we were not fans of the whole sichuan peppercorns, they got pushed to one side. A little oily but the spring onion greens added at the end cut through that.

  • Ro_ on September 20, 2021

    Very nice, but not special enough to be one I'd rush to repeat, I don't think.

• Chicken soup with pickled mustard greens (Suan cai ji si tang)

  • Frenchfoodie on July 19, 2018

    Lovely. Delicate and tangy. Good use for pickled mustard greens used elsewhere in the book.

• Dried-fried beef slivers (Gan bian niu rou si)

  • Frenchfoodie on July 19, 2018

    Yum. The beef dries and toasts a little, almost as though you cooked with jerky - in a good way. Then there is a fresh crunch from the celery.

• Deep-fried green beans 1 (Gan bian si ji dou)

  • Frenchfoodie on July 19, 2018

    Delicious. Nice accompaniment to the chilli heavy dishes in the dish and really quick to throw together.

• Radish slivers in a spicy dressing (Liang ban luo bu si)

  • Frenchfoodie on July 19, 2018

    Delicious. Easy and tasty. You dress at the table so those liking less chilli can hold back.

  • Ro_ on July 31, 2020

    Another great and simple recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop, and a great cold dish for the hot weather. Would definitely make this again.

• Boiled aromatic peanuts (Lu hua sheng)

  • Frenchfoodie on July 19, 2018

    These are surprisingly good, a new texture (as Fuchsia says, crunchy but not crisp), and very moreish.

• Fish-fragrant pork slivers (Yu xiang rou si)

  • Frenchfoodie on July 19, 2018

    Delicious. I love the ‘fish fragrant’ style and it comes together so easily. Works without the cloud ear muchrooms if necessary.

  • Ro_ on November 18, 2019

    As a fan of fish fragrant aubergines, but lacking aubergines and having pork to use up, I gave this a try. That familiar fish-fragrant sauce was just as good as ever, such an absolutely delicious mix of flavours. Overall I prefer it with the aubergines because the texture of them is just so right, but it worked with the pork as well, so I'll certainly reuse this recipe when I have pork to use up. Note: I used wood ear mushrooms instead of cloud ear mushrooms, and some thin slivers of carrot instead of bamboo shoots.

• Red-braised pork (Hong shao rou)

  • Frenchfoodie on July 19, 2018

    A big hit. Unctious and tasty - fatty too but you have to embrace that with pork belly.

  • Ro_ on September 20, 2021

    This is just so good, my family loved it. The tender, delicious fatty pork and the sweet, salty sauce...it's just a winning combination, and so easy to do because you basically just let everything simmer in a pot for 2 hours. Not sure how different this is from Dunlop's other red braised pork recipes in Every Grain of Rice and Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, I'd have to check, but think it's basically the same recipe.

• Rabbit with Sichuan pepper (Hua jiao tu ding)

  • Ro_ on August 31, 2021

    The flavours of this were quite nice, but I used off the bone rabbit and what with it being first deep fried then cooked again, it came out dry. I think next time I'd use on the bone to try to keep it moist.

• Fine green beans in ginger sauce (Jiang zhi jiang dou)

  • Ro_ on August 27, 2021

    This was one of those "perfectly nice" recipes. I loved the ginger and the sauce, but I feel like I'd have prefered the dish to be hot or warm. I've made other Chinese green bean recipes I prefer.

• Dry-fried green beans 2 (Gan bian si ji dou)

  • Ro_ on September 24, 2020

    These were nice, but nothing special enough for me to particularly want to make them again.

• Stir-fried mixed mushrooms (Shan shen hui)

  • Ro_ on September 02, 2021

    A nice, light dish. I didn't have chicken fat to hand so used oil, but I could see it would have been nicer with fat. There's a similar recipe in another Dunlop book with added scallions, which I would like to try

• Stir-fried potato slivers with chillies and Sichuan pepper (Qiang tu dou si)

  • Ro_ on October 23, 2019

    I hadn't made a Chinese recipe for potato slivers before, but had potatoes to use up so thought I'd give it a go. I grated the potatoes in my food processor, left them in cold water until I was ready to use them, and then drained them and dried them further with a tea-towel. The overall dish was good, the chilli/Sichuan pepper flavouring is subtle but very nice. I found I needed to add quite a bit of salt to get the balance of seasoning right. Note: this recipe made soft (but with a bite), oily potato slivers rather than golden, crispy ones - I'm not sure if that was the idea or not (I find it hard to get a wok super-hot on my hob), but it was still very good and my partner particularly liked it.

• Dry-fried aubergines (Gan bian qie zi)

  • Ro_ on September 01, 2022

    Very very simple, quite bland in itself. I would only make this again as an accompaniment to a richly spiced dish with a lot of sauce.

• Courgette slivers with garlic (Chao nan gua si)

  • Ro_ on February 18, 2021

    Very simple, but a good way to use up courgette. Be careful not to burn the garlic, it can happen very quickly.

• Fish-fragrant chicken slivers (Yu xiang ji si)

  • Ro_ on July 31, 2020

    This was seriously, seriously good. Ideal food for when it's unbearably hot, the family guzzled this down and then asked for more. I used half a chicken which had been poached according to the book's method the day before. The sauce was delicious: definitely a great way to serve cold chicken.

• Fish with chillies and Sichuan pepper (La zi yu)

  • Ro_ on September 28, 2021

    I found this an "only OK" recipe, to be fair I wimped out on the chilli oil and didn't use the full 200ml stated. I prefer just the normal chilli bean sauce accompaniment to white fish.

• Spicy cold noodles with chicken slivers (Ji si liang mian)

  • Ro_ on August 03, 2020

    Another great cold Chinese dish from Fuchsia Dunlop. My only reason for not favouriting this is that it's essentially quite similar to Bang Bang Chicken, but without so many crudites and with a different type of noodle, and I already have a recipe for Bang Bang Chicken which I love and ultimately prefer.

• Steamed buns with spicy beansprout stuffing (Dou ya bao zi)

  • Ro_ on February 13, 2021

    These were great, texturally and in terms of taste. The filling had just the right amount of moisture to mean the buns really popped and imparted a lot of flavour in your mouth, without making it really difficult to seal them. I will make these again. I had a slight issue with my bamboo steamer catching on fire during cooking which ruined that batch, but luckily I had more buns waiting to go on the side ;-)

• Everyday stock (Xian tang)

  • Ro_ on December 31, 2019

    I didn't have pork bones, so just used a raw chicken carcass, ginger and spring onions. It made a nice, light stock which I plan to use in a recipe for ginger chicken from a different Fuschsia Dunlop book.

• Steamed pork and cabbage dumplings (Xiao long zheng jiao)

  • Ro_ on January 09, 2023

    I used bought dumpling wrappers. These were nice but I prferred the pork and courgette variant which had more flavour.

• Salt-fried pork (Yan jian rou)

  • katy1729 on August 10, 2019

    Added red and green bell peppers (cooked separately first). Used spring onions instead of baby leeks and rose harissa instead of chilli bean paste; also pork tenderloin instead of pork belly (for a healthier option). Very tasty, though perhaps my version was a little dry due to the lower fat content.