Szechuan peppercorns
Recently Himself attended a class in making bitters and infusions and came home with his head filled with newly-learned techniques and ideas for concoctions he wanted to try. Today we hit Spice Station in Silverlake so that he could stock up on some things to infuse–Angelica, Szechuan peppercorns, sassafras root and rose petals. Tonight he’s in the kitchen making infusions.
While he was busy with his Mad Scientist measuring and pouring, I thieved a couple of tiny Szechuan peppercorns, chewed them up and held them against my tongue. Soon a strange, warm/cool tingling spread throughout my mouth and prompted uncontrollable drooling! My taste buds were riotously entertained and overwhelmed by a surge of salty, sour and floral waves. All I could do was stand there making inarticulate noises of pleasure and reaching for a paper towel to mop my soggy chin. Himself looked at me as if he was considering dialing 911.
Szechuan peppercorns, which provide the cool, tingling relief in hot Szechuan cuisine are not actually related to any pepper. Rather, they’re from the citrus family, which is why there’s a lemony component to their flavor. But they’re not at all peppery–they’re sort of heat’s antithesis. I’d say they’re as much a pepper as grapefruit is a grape.
I’ve had them in Szechuan food many times, but this is the first time I’d tried them on their own to see how they combat super-hot peppers. It was mindblowing! I knew good ol’ Harold McGee would be able to explain what had just happened inside my mouth, so I grabbed my copy of his classic On Food and Cooking. This is the tome to which every food geek turns for enlightenment and understanding on topics related to food matters. Harold never lets me down. His explanation of what happens when you eat a Szechuan peppercorn is about as trippy as the actual feeling you get from eating one! The active ingredient in it is a component called sanshools, which he says, “produce a strange, tingling, buzzing, numbing sensation that is something like the effect of carbonated drinks or of a mild electrical current (touching the terminals of a nine-volt battery to the tongue). Sanshools appear to act on several different kinds of nerve endings at once, induce sensitivity to touch and cold in nerves that are ordinarily nonsensitive, and so perhaps cause a kind of general neurological confusion.”
This may seem like a bizarre thing to want your food to do, but it’s actually a good thing. Take a look at this dish:
Szechuan fish hot pot
See all those lipstick-looking hot peppers in this Szechuan fish hot pot? The balance of those and the Szechuan peppercorns means you can enjoy the heat in the dish without being punished by it. Those tiny peppercorns relieve with their cooling and tingling, and apparently, by confusing the hell out of your senses, but in a quite pleasant and harmless way.
Hmm, I see recreational possibilities in these little jobbies….
