Feeding my addiction has never been so good for me. Some people say chocolate is better than sex. I say chiles are better than chocolate, and I’ve had good chocolate.
I ran out of Guizhou Chile Paste. You have to understand, that stuff is meant to last a long time. It’s not like you eat it by the spoonful. It is addictive, though, and I went through it like it was candy. No, really, the sichuan peppercorns are actually addictive, I think. They would be illegal if someone who had power over such things actually tasted them or knew what they could do. Fortunately, most business lunches don’t end up at Chinese restaurants that would dream of using the stuff. In fact, I don’t know any restaurants at all in Montreal or Toronto that use them. They probably do, but I don’t know them. They’re hard enough to find, (both the peppercorns and the restaurants) and even harder to find good quality (both, again).
Fortunately Épices de Cru is an amazing company that is feeding my addiction. Also fortunately, no recipe that calls for these things actually calls for very much, so a small container lasts a long time. Much longer than my chile paste did. They’re pungent, to say the least. I bit into a whole peppercorn the other day and subsequently couldn’t feel my lips for half an hour. It’s not that they’re hot or “spicy”, whatever that means, but they actually do have an anesthetic quality. It’s weird, though, because it’s not like a drug that knocks you out. You won’t be able to feel your lips, but you’ll be high on endorphins and have so much energy. You know how certain foods are supposedly aphrodisiacs? Things like oysters, which I don’t understand. They’re slimy and delicious but physically I don’t think there’s actually a property in them that excites you. Sichuan peppercorns elicit a physical response. You’ll probably also feel hungry after eating the tiniest bit, because your metabolism will be in overdrive from the endorphins. So you’ll want to keep eating, which probably means having more of the dish with the peppercorns…and the cycle continues.
Addiction.
I’m trying to be a careful addict. I don’t really want to recover, but I don’t want to push my obsession too far. So instead of making the guizhou chile paste again, I decided to try the recipe in Beyond the Great Wall for pickled red peppers. Really I did this because the long red chile peppers looked so fresh at my favourite mushroom shop in Atwater Market (any idea why they put the mushrooms and chile peppers together in a large horizontal display in the middle of the store? I mean, I don’t usually cook mushrooms and chilies together). The recipe also calls for a quarter the amount of the sichuan peppercorns needed for the other paste, so the effect shouldn’t be so acute. It’ll be like going from 8 cups of coffee a day to 2.
There are two ways to do this recipe – the fast way and the not so fast way. Since I don’t know how to safely sterilize a jar for pickling, I went with the fast one. I also wanted to eat the pickled chilies with dinner, not in 2 weeks. Even my kitchen forethought tops out at a few days. There’s a reason I don’t make my own vanilla extract or age bottles of wine.
Ingredients:
4 long red chile peppers
1/2 cup unseasoned rice vinegar
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt (I used Himalayan crystal salt)
1/8 tsp sichuan peppercorns (it didn’t say ground, so I assume whole was fine)
1/2 star anise, whole or broken (I found a whole half).
I like that this isn’t a sweet pickle. Actually, the chiles are kind of sweet on their own, so I don’t think it needs any sugar, but feel free to add some the second time you make it if you’re not happy with your first batch.
Take out the seeds of the chile peppers. This is where the flavourless heat comes from. If you don’t take them out the chiles will just burn you. Without them, you can actually taste the freshness of the peppers.
Now the recipe said to remove the tops and slice the chiles into half inch slices, but it didn’t specify how to cut them length-wise. I decided to make thin strips and estimate 1/2″ slices. I think I misread the directions and actually cut them into 1 1/2″ slices, but that’s what teeth are for…when you mess up. Place the chiles in a heat-proof bowl large enough to press a small plate on top of them later, or a lid that touches the surface of the chiles. This will make sense in a minute.
Heat the vinegar in a saucepan (don’t boil, just warm) and then add the salt, sichuan peppercorns and star anise. Bring the mixture to a boil and then pour over the chiles in the bowl. Now you want to put the small plate or lid on top of the chiles to weigh them down and completely cover them in the pickling liquid. If your bowl is too deep the liquid will just spread out and not do its job, and if the bowl is too small you may not be able to get a weight or plate in there to keep the chiles submerged and covered. Let them stand 30 minutes, or longer to infuse.
So I did, and then I drained off the pickling liquid and and used it to pickle some radish that I had cut into matchsticks. 
I am thinking of now draining the radishes to use the liquid to pickle some corrots. If I do this I will add some sugar to the liquid. I like the sweetness of the carrots.
Despite two marriage proposals this past week, I am still in search of high-quality chocolate.
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