Southern cornbread

Bread is the most basic and satisfying of foods, rightfully called “the staff of life.” While loaves, buns, rolls, baguettes and all the rest are wonderful, still I’m a Southern girl. And that means Southern-styled quick breads like biscuits and cornbread are what I crave.

I stand pretty firmly in the cornbread camp. While I love a good biscuit, unless I need a wrapper for my country ham or a bed for my sorghum, I’ll reach straight for the cornbread every time.

Wedges of gold: baked in cast iron, they're crunchy on the outside, pillow-soft on the inside.

This is problematic now that I live in Los Angeles, because what passes for cornbread here is way too sweet and cake like–and usually as dry as the road into the high desert. Granted, every region has its own take on cornbread, but whatever you grew up with tends to be what you gravitate toward. So if I want a good piece of cornbread, I have to make it myself.

Learning at the side of a mother, grandmother, aunt or older sister is the way such knowledge and technique are usually acquired (let’s face it, in the rural South it was seldom a man doing the teaching or the learning to cook). But as with those cultures that pass down their lore and traditions orally, few ever took the time to write anything down. I didn’t realize until well into my adult years that I’d ever be interested in cooking Southern food, so to my shame, this was not something I absorbed in my youth.

Going...

A few years ago at an International Association of Culinary Professionals conference I met Adam Reid from America’s Test Kitchen, and he was astonished when I told him the best, most authentic recipe I’d yet found for making cornbread as we know it in the South–at least in my part of the South–came from ATK’s cookbook. I applaud these folks for figuring out and recording the measurements and method required to accomplish this feat.

So here’s my confession: My recipe for authentic Southern cornbread comes from ATK’s Yankee kitchen in Boston. Please don’t hate me or judge me a fraud. I think it’s pretty gutsy of me to make this admission.

I hope you’ll give this recipe a try, and don’t shy away from the call for bacon drippings. They make it taste so much better than it would with any other type of fat. And unless you eat the entire skilletful of cornbread by yourself in one sitting (although that could happen) you’re not going to ingest that much dripping.

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A note on the bacon drippings: I’ll save my diatribe on bacon drippings for a separate blog entry, but let me just say that the better the drippings, the better your cornbread will be, so collect them from good, smoky bacon.

Southern Cornbread

from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, with my asides

4 tsp. bacon drippings (there are 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon, so I just use a slightly rounded tablespoon)

drippings: pure porky nectar

1 cup yellow cornmeal

2 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/3 cup rapidly boiling water (don’t be lazy & try to get by with hot tap water)

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 large egg, lightly beaten

Position the oven rack in the lower-middle of the oven. Put the bacon drippings in an 8-inch cast iron skillet, set the skillet in the oven, and preheat the oven to 450ºF.

Whisk 2/3 cup of the cornmeal with sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a small bowl and set aside. (Sift the baking powder and baking soda if needed so you don’t get tiny pockets of rising agent in the final product.)

Put the remaining 1/3 cup of the cornmeal into a medium-sized bowl, add the boiling water and stir to make a stiff mush. Gradually whisk in the buttermilk until smooth, working out any lumps. Now whisk in the egg and then gently fold in the dry ingredients until just combined. (Gently fold, because what gives cornbread its rise is the chemical reaction of the buttermilk’s acid with the base of the baking soda and baking powder. If you stir aggressively or dawdle between this point and oven time, you’ll lose that rising power, and the cornbread will be heavy and dense.)

When the oven has fully preheated, the skillet and drippings will be “rippin’ hot,” as ATK’s Julia Collin-Davison likes to say. Carefully remove the hot skillet from the oven, pour the melted drippings into the batter and stir, then pour the batter into the skillet. Bake until golden brown, between 15 and 20 minutes, depending on your oven.

Turn the cornbread out onto a wire rack and let cool a few minutes before falling face down on it.

Gone!

All dolled up for the Golden Globes (we're going with a low-res snapshot from home, so I don't get into copyright trouble with any of those red carpet photogs!)

So I quizzed my buddy Missi Pyle, who is currently appearing in this season’s awards frontrunner, The Artist (Woo-woo! Yeah, Missi!). That’s her on the left, wearing a gown that’s the color of my jar of tarragon mustard. Incidentally, the dazzling young woman with her is her sister, Meredith, who is also actress, hint-hint to anyone looking for not one but two lovely and talented actresses to hire.

Missi confirmed my suspicions, admitting that yes, those dresses are borrowed. (She added that after the ceremony, she turns into a pumpkin at midnight. And I’m betting that at midnight her limo driver morphs into an unemployed screenwriter.) Gone are the days of Joanne Woodward sewing the gown in which she collected her Best Actress Oscar in 1958. Today’s actresses and assorted Hollywood red carpet striders are essentially wearing the equivalent of sparkly fruitcake.

When you think about it, neither evening gowns nor fruitcakes spend very much time in any one person’s possession. This is not a problem as far as I can tell. Who wants to wear fancy gowns and eat fruitcake all the time? There are more comfy clothes to wear, more enjoyable foods to eat.

For your nibbling pleasure I suggest panforte, which is the Sienese take on fruitcake, but much better than fruitcake ever dreamed of being. Made of nuts, dried fruits, honey and spices, it’s what Tuscan soldiers carried to fortify themselves as they headed into battle. Think of it as the medieval version of the Cliff Bar. Here’s a recipe for a panforte I developed while I was a culinary student interning in the Los Angeles Times test kitchen. I devised this recipe based on local foods that I could find in area farmers’ markets.

It makes a wonderful holiday treat, great for gift giving, too, but recently Himself and I realized that panforte is just as healthy as high-protein, high-energy sports bars, but without the high price. It tastes better, too. I’ve decided to start making it throughout the year, not just during the holidays.

I think we're both rockin' those pink blankies!

As for comfier clothes, Missi and I are in agreement: Wrapping up in fuzzy blankets as we hang out on a chilly night is the only way to await the stroke of midnight, when we both turn into pumpkins.

I wonder which sparkly fruitcake she’ll wear to the Oscars this year…

Most of us think things we have the good manners not to say out loud. I tend to vocalize those thoughts more often than I should. Sometimes hilarity ensues. Sometimes it doesn’t.

It all started so innocently.

Himself and I were on the way to Intelligentsia to take a load off after running errands, and as we passed Crate & Barrel we decided to pop in and have a look at their dining tables. We have a nice, big table, and we really like it, but it’s in a room that is so tiny it’s challenging to seat more than the two of us. Essentially, if you want to gather at our dining table, you have to be either pencil thin or coated in butter. Preferably both.

Blaze is the only one who fits comfortably in the dining chairs next to the wall.

A lovely Crate & Barrel employee–I’ll call her Susan–showed us some tables and explained their various attributes and features. She was helpful but respected our space. No hard sell, which I truly appreciate. We thanked her and wandered on to another part of the store.

A little later she finished up with a customer close by and came over to check on us. We made some small talk about how comfy the furniture was and which pieces we fancied. Emboldened by our easy rapport, she volunteered a story to illustrate the cushiness of their comfy chairs:

“A lady came in one time with lots of shopping bags, and she sat down in this really comfortable chair and fell right asleep, with those bags on the floor all around her.” We laughed, so she continued: “After awhile we decided it was a little odd and we had to wake her up. We were actually kind of afraid that she might have died!”

Instead of smiling politely and saying something innocuous like, “Oh my!” “Isn’t that something?” or “Who could blame you?” I instead blurted out, “Wow! If she’d died in that chair, I bet we could have gotten a great discount on it!”

Susan’s happy, storytelling face fell, and she looked positively stricken. She took a step back, clearly convinced that she was making nice with a deranged woman. Somewhere a cricket cleared his throat for the solo.

“Carol!” Himself sort of half-scolded me and tried to usher me away.

“But she didn’t actually DIE,” I protested a little too loudly, my voice echoing through the furniture department. “She was just ASLEEP!” He tried to act put out with me, but he was laughing his ass off, his annoyance completely unconvincing.

A sputtered excuse me/gotta go/bye now, and Susan scrammed, leaving behind one of those little “Susan” shaped figures in the air just like in the cartoons when a character dashes away.

“I CAN NEVER SHOW MY FACE IN CRATE & BARREL AGAIN!” I howled as we headed down the stairs, shoppers on two floors glancing our way and then quickly pretending we weren’t there.

There’s something about a good laugh that stirs up the giddy in me and makes everything funny. It’s probably more of an intoxicant than alcohol. I think I’m funny, but others just give me an uneasy look that says they really hope I’ll go away soon. Just like you do when some happy drunk wanders up and tries to make conversation. It’s the look that was on our coffeemeister’s face in Intelligentsia five minutes later when I started cracking wise about making my own change from the tip jar. Himself shooed me away from the counter and sent me to look for seats before things could get any more embarrassing.

(I plead that there is a practical aspect to my whacked thinking. Once a colleague returned from the police station after her stolen car was recovered. They found that the car was filled with dozens of purses, none of which belonged to her. So my question was, “Do any of the purses match any of your shoes?” She didn’t find my line of thinking nearly as helpful as I did.)

If we’d been stopped by police on the way home for erratic driving on the freeway, I’m not sure we could have explained to their satisfaction why we were laughing so hard as to be a menace to others on the road. A breathalizer would have shown only coffee in our systems, so we’d have no doubt been hauled off to the psych ward for observation.

Now I’m thinking that out of sheer guilt I should return to Crate & Barrel and buy a table and chairs and that I should buy them only from Susan. She clearly earned her commission. I’m just sorry that she’ll never again feel free to tell the sleeping shopping-bag lady story. Or maybe she will, and she’ll even include the part about the crazy woman willing to go to disturbing lengths for a bargain.

Poor Himself. It’s so very hard to take me out in public.

collards cooking with hamhocks

As with so many Southern dishes, this one is cooked more by instinct and personal taste than with a recipe. I use two bunches of collard greens to make about four servings. Greens are deceptive–you think you have way too many when you start out, but they always cook down to nearly nothing. So put on your biggest pot and throw in as many greens as you can.

As with any type of green, rinse them well, so you don’t get those dastardly gritty bits caught in your teeth. I start with a generous dollop of bacon drippings melted over medium high heat, to wilt the greens before adding about three cups of water, a little salt and some red pepper flakes and tossing in some hog jowl, hamhocks, ham bits, bacon or whatever pork you have lying around. The pork additions are salty, so add salt judiciously. Simmer for about 40 minutes, or longer if necessary, until the chewiness is gone. While spinach cooks up quickly, collards are thicker and more leathery, and they take considerably longer to cook. Sprinkle on some pepper vinegar if they seem a little gamey and set the bottle on the table so everyone can fine tune their own serving.

collards & hard boiled eggs

I put on some eggs to hard boil while the collards simmer. One of the classic Southern presentations (now there’s a prissy expression you don’t often hear at the Southern table!) is to serve them topped with slices of hard boiled egg. If your only source of protein for the meal is just a few bits of ham or bacon in the greens, it’s good to get a little extra from the eggs. And it looks pretty, don’t you think?

pot likker

What’s left behind after you get all the greens out of the pot is healthier than the greens themselves. This is the pot likker, and it’s where all the Vitamin A go during cooking. Well, I say it’s healthier, but there’s a fair amount of pork fat in there. That’s okay if you’re about to go plow the back forty. Some people like the pot likker best of all, spooned over cornbread or biscuits. Never throw this stuff away! You can at least keep it and use it as a soup base.

I’ve had really good collards in Ethiopian restaurants, where they’re steamed and served sprinkled with olive oil, garlic and spices, but for me, preparing them in a pork fat spa is still the way to go. As they say, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.

the few, the treasured, the orphan glasses

I love scoping out mismatched glasses in thrift stores. It’s fun rummaging through and looking for odd pieces that have their own, unknown histories of lives I never knew. I always wonder how they got there, whether they were impulse purchases or unwanted gifts, or perhaps the flotsam cleared out after a death in someone’s family. I like to envision them in their previous lives and, at least with the goblets and fancier stemmed pieces, I like to imagine what occasions they were used to toast. Engagements and weddings? Births and adoptions? New jobs and promotions? Retirements? Publications? This last one would certainly get them used in our household!

In addition to those I get because they catch my eye, lately I’m picking them up here and there for Himself, who loves to make, photograph and write about cocktails (which you’ll find at The Booze Nerd and Dr(Ink)Gorilla). They add to his trove of glassware for photography, so it’s not just the same one or two glasses shown in every drink photo.

At times I curse the sameness of the regiment of glasses in my cabinet bought by the box at Target or Macy’s or Pier I. I’ve sighed more heavily over breaking one of my odd, one-of-a-kind glasses than over a Waterford goblet received as a wedding gift. It makes me want to stuff the cabinet with odd glasses and send the matching sets to a thrift store where I can ignore them in favor of mongrel bits and pieces to include in my orphanage of glassware.

Maybe I just need to toast more momentous occasions with those Waterford glasses. Then they’ll be as special to me as the odd pieces. It’s certainly worth a try.

Still wearing our Christmas clothes, Joe & I celebrate with a shared birthday cake, eight candles on his side and three on mine. (No, that's not my coffee!)

Today’s my birthday. Never mind which one. I’m past the age of wanting to count them–certainly past the age of adding “and-a-half” long about mid-summer.

I’ve always felt ambivalent about birthdays. While I enjoy celebrating those of others, when it comes to my own, I’ve grown accustomed to being lost in the holiday shuffle. For starters, my birthday comes close on the heels of Christmas, so I grew up being handed a red-and-green wrapped gift with the words, “This is for both Christmas and birthday.” No kid–or adult–wants to hear that. Add to this the fact that my brother’s birthday is three days after mine. Our family always celebrated both on the Sunday falling closest to both, with Joe’s candles on one side of the cake and mine on the other. We grew up modestly on a Tennessee farm amongst hardworking, practical people who didn’t make a fuss over such things as birthdays. It’s no wonder there were no parties and family legends of blowouts fit for the society column of the local newspaper. And it’s no wonder that nowadays if someone does make a fuss over my birthday, I get self conscious, turn red and want to hide.

When I was a kid I envied those whose birthdays were in July, who had parties at the local swimming pool. That seemed like the coolest thing ever–I couldn’t imagine anything more glamorous. But quite often my birthday was on a snow day, which was even better. “Wow! We’re out of school on my birthday! Let’s sleep late and then build a snow fort!” And make snow cream, which no July birthday kid ever got.

Celebrating with Himself--I don't mind sharing!

Now I often celebrate my birthday with Himself, whose birthday falls a week before mine. He got caught in the Christmas-and-birthday snag, too, so he understands those conflicted feelings of disappointment in being overlooked and then not knowing what to do when people pay attention. Some years we celebrate jointly. Some we don’t. This year he got his own celebration.

And today I get mine. People keep asking what restaurant we’re going to, the assumption being that with my culinary background and being a professional food writer, we’ll be splashing out at one of the poshest places in Los Angeles. But that’s seldom what I go for. I’ve had great birthday meals at Palate, Osteria Mozza and Bashan, but last year I wanted to stay in. Himself and our friend John made a huge batch of pot stickers and we feasted on a basic meal prepared with love and served from the heart. It was a fantastic evening.

Sometimes I feel like my friends are disappointed if I don’t come up with some grand scheme for celebrating my birthday. Which makes me wonder if I’m planning the birthday I really want or the birthday others seem to want for me. This year I think I want nothing more complicated than a trove of really good ice cream and a couple of spoons. Perhaps Himself and I can eat ice cream in front of the television and watch DVDs of something we love but haven’t seen in ages. And laugh and enjoy being together.

Who needs a limo, a budget-smashing restaurant charge and a three-alarm hangover? Ice cream with Himself is celebration enough for me.

On the list of Christmas gifts I was hoping to receive–and which I DID receive–this past Christmas was a copy of Maria Speck’s Ancient Grains For Modern Meals. Her book is jam packed with a wealth of dishes using an array of what I’d call “Old World” grains*, dishes that are really, really good. That they are also healthy is a delightful side note.

There's also the need to unload the pantry--I counted almost two dozen open bags! More on this embarrassment later...

I want to cook every dish in this book. This is my non-resolution resolution. No grand proclamations of any sort (beyond this blog entry). Just a desire to eat a little healthier and to expand our repertoire of go-to recipes. Seeing as how I also plan to make and enjoy one of my Southern favorites each week, this is a good way to balance out some of those bacon dripping-laced culinary transgressions. I easily envision every recipe in this book becoming a favorite. I’m making notes in it as I cook, recording tweaks and ideas for variations on some fine themes.

Sometimes we need to proclaim our resolutions loudly, as a way of indirectly asking those around us to hold our feet to the fire and hold us accountable for the things we say we’re going to do when we’re in the throes of optimism (or we’ve had a little too much bubbly on New Year’s Eve). But sometimes it’s nice to simply say to ourselves, “Hey, why not try this? It’ll be fun/tasty/good for me.” No megaphoned announcements from the rooftop or on Facebook or Twitter or Google+. Just a quiet taking on of a new challenge we’re sure to enjoy and perhaps benefit from.

Lemon Quinoa with Currants, Dill & Zucchini

We started with Lemon Quinoa with Currants, Dill and Zucchini, a summery dish that was welcome on an 82-degree winter’s day in Southern California. It was marvelous, replete with a blending of flavors and textures that made Himself and me smack our chops and make yummy sounds as we enjoyed firsts and seconds. And it makes good leftovers. In fact, I’m going to go polish off the rest of it right now. Bon appetit to me!

*The list includes amaranth, quinoa, spelt, millet, farro, barley and kamut, along with the more recognizable wild rice, couscous, buckwheat, oats, grits/polenta and rye.

black-eyed peas for luck in the coming year

I’m not sure where this thinking comes from, but Southerners have long held that chowing down on a serving of black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day is essential to the coming year’s good luck. I had a college roommate who, in spite of celebrating the incoming year a little too freely, still managed to choke down a single black-eyed pea one New Year’s Day. And with that, she was convinced she’d gotten the year off to a proper start. I didn’t say anything, but I figured she needed all the good luck she could get in light of the wealth of trouble she’d stirred up the night before.

Oh well. Say what you will, but I do think that with all the culinary sinning going on during the holidays, it’s nice to have something as basic as a bowl of black-eyed peas to see you into the new year. And they’re cheap, which is a welcome relief after all the expenditures of the preceding weeks. Black-eyed peas are a great resolutions food. You know: I resolve to eat healthier next year. I resolve not to spend as much next year…

I come from a farm family where every dinner and supper (we didn’t have anything called “lunch” there) was of the meat-and-three variety. There was always a serving of meat–a hunk of meat, not just little bits of it stirred into rice or pasta–three vegetables (seasoned with bacon drippings), bread and dessert. In spite of this, I’m perfectly happy with a one-dish meal, and Himself usually prefers this, too. But if we’re going to sit down to a meal made up almost entirely of legumes and rice, it better be a dang good dish of food.

For New Year’s Day this year, it’s black-eyed peas on a bed of brown rice. There’s really not much of a recipe here. You rinse the dried black-eyed peas and sift through, looking for any small rocks that might have gotten in during the harvest. Bring them to a boil in a large pot of water, then kill the heat, slap on the lid and let them sit for an hour. Then pour out the water, add some fresh and simmer for an hour or so, until the peas are cooked to your liking. Where the creativity and personal preference come in is in how you season them. A chunk of fat back or hog jowl tossed into the pot during cooking is good. I was out of both, but I did have a nice piece of country ham with a bone in it, so I cut it into several hunks and threw those in, along with a red jalapeno pepper, quartered. The ham had enough salt that we didn’t need to add any more.

We sprinkled our black-eyed peas with some pepper vinegar and accompanied them with some home-canned watermelon rind pickles we’d bought at a recent church bake sale. It was a simple but satisfying meal–and our annual black-eyed pea immunization against all things diabolical for the coming year.

To be truthful, this isn't just black-eyed peas and rice. I was pretty generous with the "flavoring agent." In my opinion, the more pork the better!

p.s. As I was proofreading this entry aloud, when I got to the word “rinse,” I said, “rench,” which is what my dad always said. I have a feeling a lot more Southern words and pronunciations are going to come creeping in this year.

Well, thunderation! Daddy used to say that, too.

pepper vinegar: a staple of the Southern kitchen table

After spending so much time and blog space eating and writing my way around the globe, I’ve decided to shine a little light on the foods of my native South, The Old Country, as I sometimes call it (not the least bit ironically, mind you). I’m not talking about fancy, complicated dishes, but rather the good, basic, substantial food of the rural South. Because no matter how much haute cuisine I encounter these days, it is the stuff that nourished me when I was just a wee sprout that comforts me now.

A lot of people believe that since I’m Southern, I must be cooking heavy Southern dishes every day here in Los Angeles. Except for a special occasion every so often, I reserve eating like this for when I’m back home. We used to occasionally have barbecue shipped to us from Memphis, but we don’t do that too often any more. While a couple of places in LA do a decent enough job with a Southern spread, Himself and I finally decided that when a particular food just doesn’t ring true, it’s better not to have it at all. So we go home with a list of all those foods we want to enjoy while we’re there and promise ourselves we’ll eat more responsibly once we’re back.

So what am I holding up in the photograph? It’s a bottle of white vinegar with a chili pepper in it. Pepper vinegar is the ubiquitous condiment of the Southern table, whose primary function–as far as I’ve ever known–is to sprinkle on your collard greens to enliven them and tame their gaminess. It works great on black-eyed peas and other densely flavored and textured foods as well.

This bottle is quite fancy. Back home such a bottle would have originally come with a sauce of some kind in it. When it was empty, it would have been washed and filled with white vinegar and a green chili pepper, and a nail hole would have been driven into the lid. I didn’t have such a bottle, so I went all high toned and bought a bottle especially for the job. Disgraceful, I know, but I have become citified…

I spend so much time in the city now, and away from my native South, that I’m feeling the need to pay a little more attention to it and to share some of those dishes with you. Just one dish each week, because most everything from back home is so laden with butter, lard, bacon fat or some other tasty health hazard that one dish a week is probably all I should risk–unless I can get a farming job to keep me sufficiently active.

So it’s time to pull out the iron skillet and put it back into regular use. During the past few years I’ve mainly used it for making cornbread, but it really should be in everyday employment. In her cooking heyday, my mother’s iron skillets were in such good, well-seasoned shape that she could even cook eggs and fish in them without any sticking. I aspire to get my cast iron in that good a shape!

Have a great Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice and holiday season everyone. Here’s to great times–and meals!–with friends and family, and to Peace on Earth.

See you in 2012!

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 where 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….