The first time I understood Suan Cai Yu, I was sitting in a borrowed kitchen in south London, watching a friend lift a bundle of pickled greens out of a glass jar and drop it into hot oil. The sound...
In the Chengdu and Chongqing of today, there is no faster, humbler or more beloved plate of “quick hot pot” than a bowl of maocai. You point at what you want; a cook dips it into a vast pot of...
Ask most people to picture Sichuan food and they will describe a swimming red pot, steam curling into the air. But some of the province’s most bewitching dishes are served cold, and none more so than boboji — the skewers...
Most people picture hot pot as a lake of chilli-red oil. But the dish that taught me a different lesson about Southwest China was pale, cool and quietly green. On my first winter night in the mountains around Chongqing, an...
