I’ve been meaning to buy Fuchsia Dunlop’s books for years, friends rave about them and as someone who loves eating Sichuan food, I really should have got my act together a bit sooner. Even now, this copy of Sichuan Cookery is borrowed from a mate – an exchange for my beloved (and signed!) copy of Persia in Peckham by shop keeper extraordinaire, Sally Butcher.

I thought it best to start with some classics so I settled on twice cooked pork (hui guo rou) and ma po dou fu, otherwise known as ‘Pock-marked Mother Chen’s Beancurd, after the inventor of the dish – the wife of a Qing Dynasty restaurateur who was terribly scarred as a result of smallpox. I’ve taken a while to come around to tofu but now I’m a fully fledged fan and if you want to convert another hater, then this is the dish that might just do it. Tender tofu is coated in a luscious thick sauce, tingly with Sichuan peppercorns and meaty with crispy fried beef – surprisingly comforting for a beancurd dish.

As I was serving up tofu to the rather sceptical boyfriend, I thought I better include a meat dish to soften the blow somewhat, hence the twice cooked pork. The belly is first simmered before being fridged (to firm it up), then sliced into thin strips and stir fried with delicious flavourings such as chilli bean paste, fermented black beans and soy.

I simmered my pork for slightly too long and it went a touch dry but was still incredible after a good wokking, which crisped up all the lovely fat into heavenly caramelised strips and turned the flavourings into a sticky, sweet, umami packed sauce which clinged to the meat. I served both dishes with plenty of plain white rice and a spicy cucumber salad (qiang huang gua, top photo) for a spicy yet refreshing contrast.

The next night, fuelled by my success with the first attempts, I turned to my mate FD once again and this time felt drawn to the rabbit with peanuts in hot bean sauce (hua ren ban tu ding), what with all those big wild bunnies being ready for the eating right now, not to mention cheap. The meat is first simmered with aromatic ginger and spring onions then stripped off the bone and combined with crunchy roasted peanuts, spring onions and a typically intense sauce of mashed fermented black beans, chilli bean paste, soy, sesame and chilli oils.

For freshness I took inspiration from Fuchsia’s ‘fine green beans in ginger sauce’ and made a variation using sliced runner beans. The dish is cold and demands that the ginger be absolutely spanking fresh. The beans are simmered, refreshed and then coated in a tongue awakening sauce of Chinkiang vinegar, sesame oil, salt and a little stock.

We are lucky here in London as ingredients are easily available from Asian supermarkets and the one just down the road from me in Peckham is good; the only ingredient I haven’t been able to find is sweet wheaten paste so I followed Fuchsia’s suggestion for a substitution and bought sweet bean sauce instead. If you don’t have access to an Asian supermarket then I would suggest ordering online. As you can probably tell by now, I tend to go through obsessive little phases with my cooking and right now I’m plunging headlong into Sichuan. I can’t believe I’ve only just discovered the delights of fermented black beans (literally want to put them in everything), not to mention Tianjin preserved vegetable, the heady funk of which at first was a bit of shock but now has become plain addictive.

So, now I’ve got all these ingredients, I need to find new things to do with them. What are your favourite Sichuan dishes? I’d love to try them (FYI, I don’t have a hotpot – yet!). Are there any other authors on Sichuan food that I really should be checking out? I’d love to hear your recommendations.

Rabbit with Peanuts in Hot Bean Sauce (hua ren ban tu ding) from ‘Sichuan Cookery’ by Fuchsia Dunlop

(serves 2 for dinner or 4 as part of a larger meal)

40g piece unpeeled fresh ginger
2 whole spring onions
500g rabbit meat (Fuchsia describes this as half a rabbit but I needed a whole one)
4 spring onions, white parts only
75g deep-fried or roasted peanuts

For the sauce
1 tablespoon fermented black beans
3 tablespoons groundnut oil
2 1/2 tablespoons Sichuan chilli bean paste (I couldn’t find Sichuan so just used a different chilli bean paste)
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon white sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1-2 tablespoons chilli oil (optional)

As an optional first step Fuchsia instructs to blanch the rabbit in boiling water to get rid of any bloodiness. I didn’t bother.

Bring a large pan of water to the boil, lightly crush the ginger and spring onions with a heavy object. When boiling, add the rabbit, return to the boil and skim. Add the ginger and spring onions and simmer over a low heat until the meat is just cooked (this will vary depending on the size of your rabbit).

When cooked, allow to cool and take the meat off the bone. Mash the fermented black beans. Heat the groundnut oil in a wok over a medium flame until hot but not smoking. Add the chilli bean paste and mashed black beans and stir fry for 30 seconds until the oil is red and fragrant. Take care not to let the flavourings burn. Tip into a small bowl and combine with the soy sauce, sugar sesame oil and chilli oil, if using.

Chop the spring onion whites into 1cm sections. When ready to serve, combine the rabbit meat, spring onions and peanuts in a serving bowl. Add the sauce and toss to coat evenly. Serve.

Please excuse my silence this week, I’ve changed hosts and had the blog re-designed* so neither you nor I have to endure that blasted header design of mushrooms plus hideous curly font  for one more second (apparently some of you might not see a change yet depending on connection and location, in case you think I might be going mad). I may have been silent here but I’ve been busy elsewhere and I even squeezed in a day trip to Paris, courtesy of Eurostar who are currently promoting the idea of day tripping to either Paris, Lille or Brussels (£59 return until the end of October).**

After a painful 4am wake up call, my mate and I excitedly boarded the 6.55am Eurostar and two and a bit hours later, hopped off at La Gare du Nord, slightly bleary eyed and in need of coffee and a map. This being a day trip and all, we squared full up to the challenge of fitting in as much as possible and so one caffeine injection and a couple of wrong turns later, headed off in the direction of the Eiffel Tower – we would nip up and see what all the fuss is about while working up an appetite for lunch in the process.

I already knew I wasn’t a huge fan of heights but seriously, I had no idea I would suffer the full on nauseating confusion of vertigo. At first I thought it might be my lack of fitness making me feel sick as a dog as we hiked up to the first viewing platform but as my knees started to tremble and dizziness went from nagging to overwhelming I guessed something might be awry. We panted and huffed it to the second floor where they wanted more money to go right to the top – a downright cheek. I can’t say I was disappointed when we decided they could stick their view. We got the lift back to sweet, sweet ground level and decided to hunt down some lunch at Le Repaire de Cartouche.

At the end of lunch, the bistro was still bustling. The space is small in a cosy way with lunching diners crammed in upstairs and a formal dining space visible down a narrow wooden staircase. The crowd was reassuringly lacking in tourists. We seemed to attract some attention from the locals inside what with our pathetic broken French and our cameras (the close quarters made any attempt at discretion completely pointless) but we ploughed on and ordered a bottle of rosé and whatever we could decipher from the (14 euro) lunch menu and our stilted interaction with the waiter.

I chose the terrine de campagne which arrived in a good hefty slab atop a well dressed herb salad. The terrine had a satisfying coarse texture, a good porky hit, generous seasoning and a melty layer of fat on top. I spread it on the toast in obscenely huge wadges with forkfuls of the salad which, being heavy on the tarragon, complimented the meat perfectly.

Hardcore carnivore that I am, I ordered steak haché and green beans to follow. The flavour of the beef was good, although not amazing but my main grumble was that it was over-cooked. The waiter hadn’t asked how I wanted it but to be honest, I can’t blame him, our French is awful. We did notice however that the same dish at the next table was gloriously pink and we speculated whether they had assumed the poor English girls might be scared by the sight of raw meat, bless ‘em. This may well be an unfair assumption on our part. The fact that the whole thing was doused in an immodest amount of butter helped take my mind off the problem somewhat.

Overall, the meal was simple, rustic, delicious and cheap. Le Repaire de Cartouche got our stamp of approval and we headed out with smiley faces to walk off the pork fat and booze fug. A look at the Pompidou, a cheeky Leffe and a stroll down the banks of the Seine to the Louvre later and we were running fast out of time. We managed to squeeze in a glimpse of the Champs Elysees too before a short (and brilliantly efficient and easy to navigate) Metro ride towards our next food destination, a wine bar called Racines, recommended by Time Out.

Alas, the trip was a wild goose chase as the bar has closed down. Somewhat despondent and incredibly fatigued we skulked over to a nearby bar to be day light robbed of 8 euros each for a pint. Sometimes the ‘go with the flow’ approach kicks you in the backside. Heading back towards the station a sudden wave of desperation to cram in another meal took hold and we ducked into a nearby pharmacy to ask some local gals if they knew anywhere nearby. They pointed us in the direction of a bistro round the corner of which, amazingly, we never checked the name. As Lizzie says in her write up, “it’s opposite a pharmacy around the corner from a wedding dress shop by Le Gare du Nord,” if that helps.

I started with a salad of boquerones. I adore anchovies and these were silky soft and delicately herby. The salad itself, although threatening to teeter the wrong side of generously dressed, was fragrant with herbs and the beans had soaked up all the salty juices. A welcome light starter after so much meat and beer.

My main course, the mullet with remoulade, was equally delicious; the remoulade light, not at all gloopy with a subtle yet confident kick of wholegrain mustard. A crispy skinned, flaky fillet of mullet on top and I was a happy lady, albeit a happy lady with indigestion as we wolfed down the lot plus beers in 30 minutes and darted for the last train home.

I think you’ll agree we crammed a huge amount in and although truly knackered at the end of it, I am now a full convert to the idea of day tripping to Europe, particularly with this Leisure Select Class deal – champagne on the journey home is incredibly effective at soothing weary feet. If you want to do a city ‘properly’, you undoubtedly need to stay there, but for a kick ass change of scenery? Do it. You get out what you put in basically. I’ve done Lille, I’ve done Paris and next I’m going to get me a big steaming bowl of mussels in Brussels.

You can see all my photos from the day here and my photos from Lille here.

*A huge thank you to Emme Stone for the site design and to my mate @handlewithcare for making it all work and putting up with me being thick about tech stuff (he also has a food blog by the way).

** I’ve had an e-mail from Sarah at We are Social letting me know that it is in fact £59 return until the end of October but in standard class, not leisure select.