With all of this talk about Chinese food it was about time that I got down to cooking some! There are several different types of Chinese cuisine and I would have to say that my favourite is the cuisine that comes from the Sichuan province for its use of chilies and the mouth numbing Sichuan peppercorns. Kung pao chicken is a quick and tasty dish that hails from the Sichuan province and uses both chilies and Sichuan peppercorns and it is a dish that I keep coming back to for more. This recipe is really easy to make though some of the ingredients may not be in every pantry. Although you can replace some of the ingredients with more commonly available ones, I recommend that you try to track down some of the Sichuan peppercorns as they really bring a lot to the table. This is mainly a meat dish that is intended to be served with other vegetable dishes but you can easily add some extra vegetables to the chicken and quickly stir fry them as I did this time with a red bell pepper. This time I also served the kung pao chicken with some steamed baby bok choy in an ouster sauce with fried shallots.
