Where there’s a problem, there’s an opportunity, as someone said to me recently. What a delightful little motto that is. I’m all for the power of positive thinking. I’ll spare you the gruesome tedium of reading about my struggles because everyone has enough of their own and really, it won’t do much for your no-doubt gleeful outlook on life. I will deliver all the information you need to receive in just one word: SKINT. Attractive fodder options for me right now are cheap or ideally, free. Frugal cooking skills are being tested. I’ve stopped thinking of foraging as some kind of romantic middle class pursuit and started approaching it in a more desperate, means of survival kind of way. Which is why I’ve been picking ants off trees and using them as a meat substitute.

Obviously I’m joking. For now. ‘Ants climbing a tree’ is the name of a popular Sichuan dish; no insects required. The crumbs of minced pork are said to look like ants climbing up the lengths of mung bean thread noodles; a typically brilliant Chinese moniker for a bowl of spicy chow.

Hands on hips, I stood and assessed the contents of an over-stuffed cupboard. Foraging starts at home and all that. The noodles were a gift from a mate and therefore free. The seasonings (chilli bean paste, soy, chilli oil, garlic etc.), all in house already and so just like the NHS, free at the point of usage. Chicken stock and pork mince were similarly extricated from the back of the freezer; the only ingredients bought on the day were the (essential) spring onions. Result.

Well, almost. The noodles were not mung bean but in the spirit of frugality I subbed them in; a bit of a mistake as they were super-glutinous with a tendency to clump. Not unpleasant but my ants were more gangs hiding in bushes than climbing up trees. The dish is typically Sichuan: boisterous with hot bean paste; salty and aromatic. I couldn’t resist adding a little funky Tianjin preserved vegetable too.

A soft opening then to a challenge which can only get harder as stocks dwindle. I must not cave to the obvious parsimonious choices: baked spuds or beans for example; even worse – together. I can live on very little money, just as long as I don’t get hit where it really hurts. Food is the most primitive of all comforts, as someone or other once said. There’s a big difference between choosing to eat an omelette every so often and actually having to eat one. This is the cusp of a period of culinary creativity at its most stretching; it’s one thing to dream up a dish when you’ve got any ingredient you wish at your disposal, quite another when options are limited. I won’t be shedding any tears over memories of rib-eye steaks or fine wines though. Like I said, no problem, but an opportunity.

Ants Climbing A Tree (this recipe is from Sunflower’s website, which is really reliable. I only made a couple of adjustments, which were to add some preserved vegetable as I am very fond of it and to omit the celery).

200g mung bean/dried glass noodles
2 tablespoons oil
3 cloves chopped garlic
2 tablespoons chilli bean sauce/paste
300g minced pork
1 tablespoon light soy
1-2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon Tianjin preserved vegetable, rinsed and chopped
1 chilli, chopped
1-2 teaspoons chilli oil
300ml chicken stock (or vegetable)
2 spring onions, for garnish
Extra chopped chilli, for garnish

Soak the noodles in warm water for about 15 minutes, with their strings on. Then drain, remove the strings and cut into shorter lengths.

Heat the oil in a pan then add the garlic, ginger and preserved vegetable if using for about 15 seconds then the chilli bean paste until fragrant. Add the pork mince and cook until brown, breaking it up into small pieces with a spoon as you stir and cook it. Add the soy, sugar and chilli (if using), followed by the noodles and stock. Let cook until the noodles have absorbed all the stock.

Garnish with spring onions, extra chilli and chilli oil.

The idea of tofu used to make me shudder. The mere mention of the word and I would turn my nose up and scoff something about it being a tasteless meat substitute eaten only by extreme hippy types like Neil from The Young Ones.

That was until I discovered ‘proper’ Chinese food – Sichuan food in particular. Ma Po Tofu was where I turned the corner. Tofu doesn’t actually taste of anything; on its own it is purely a texture, which is why the strong flavours of Sichuan cookery suit it so well. In the ma po, wobbly cubes are cooked with pork or beef mince, funky fermented black beans and numbing Sichuan pepper. I let the tofu into my life from the moment I tasted it.

From there of course I wanted more and started thinking about the best way to get it. If there’s one thing a healthy food needs, it’s fat; frying seemed like the obvious answer. I wanted a crisp, spicy coating and at first tried to achieve it using panko crumbs left over from my mac ‘n cheese but they didn’t stick particularly well and the crust turned out patchy.

It was then I remembered reading somewhere that toasted ground rice would create the crunch I was looking for, with a nutty flavour to boot. A handful of uncooked basmati tinkled into a dry pan and toasted before I pounded and pounded and pounded it for a good 15 minutes before giving in and handing it to my boyfriend. Here’s the thing: making your own ground rice in a pestle and mortar is seriously hard graft. The next day I found a bag of it in Khan’s Bargain Ltd. in Peckham – 59p. You live and learn.

It did meet expectations though; mixed with equal amounts of coarse salt, ground pepper and dried chillies, the tofu cubes are transformed into super savoury bites with a rather erm, ‘meaty’ quality.

Of course, crispy tofu, as good as it may be, does not a complete meal make. I plonked it on top of steaming rice and served it with stir fried kow choi – an oniony/chivey tasting vegetable picked up on a whim in Brixton, mixed with minced pork (recurring theme?), cabbagey Sichuan preserved vegetable and chilli bean sauce. I basically cooked it with the flavours of dry fried beans. It is now ranking high amongst my favourite vegetables. I’m an allium whore.

Tofu is a blank canvas. This is something I always knew but never accepted. It can be an ingredient in the most mundane stir fry recipe from the back of a Cauldron packet, or it can be celebrated, injected with flavours, treated with a little respect. By this I mean you have to season it right and then also remember to show it a little love in the prep stage – you can read that below.

So now of course I want to know what you’ve got up your sleeve. What’s your favourite way to cook/eat tofu?

Crisp and Spicy Tofu

1 block of extra firm tofu
2 tbsp ground rice
2tbsp coarse sea salt
1.5 tbsp ground black pepper
2 tbsp ground dried chillies
Groundnut oil, for frying

Here’s the important ‘showing it some love bit’  – line a plate with a double layer of kitchen paper and then put the tofu on top before covering with another double layer and then resting a plate or two on top. Leave it for 15 minutes. The idea is to draw out a lot of the moisture. That’s it!

Mix all the coating ingredients together. Cut the tofu into cubes and toss them in the coating mixture. Heat a 1 cm depth of oil in a heavy based pan and fry the tofu pieces until golden brown and crisp on all sides. You could of course deep fry it, but that is a bridge too far for me, quite frankly.

Kow Choi with Minced Pork

Heat 1 tbsp ground nut oil in a pan and fry 2 cloves chopped garlic, a 1 inch piece grated ginger, 1 heaped tbsp Sichuan preserved vegetable (rinsed and chopped) and 5 whole red chillies (halve them if you want it hotter) for 1 minute until fragrant. Add 1/2-1tbsp chilli bean sauce and a generous pinch of sugar, stir briefly, then add 250g kow choi (cut into inch long sections). Stir fry until wilted. Season with salt. Add a few drops of sesame oil to serve.

Sometimes there is only one thing capable of cheering me up and that is an afternoon of uninterrupted cooking. Since I twigged that I can have a go at making Sichuan food at home (duh), rarely a week has passed when I’ve not been drawn to its hot, numbing intensity. I’m now happily chomping my way through some classic recipes from what is currently my preferred resource: Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan Cookery.

This dish of ’man and wife meat slices’ or ‘fu qi fei pan’, traditionally includes a mixture of offal (‘fei pan’ translates as ‘lung slices’) but unfortunately, I had chosen to cook it on the afternoon of The Great Offal Shortage of SE London – a thorough scouring of no less than three butcher’s shops turned up not a morsel. I followed FD’s advice to use just stewing steak in one piece. The beefy hunk was simmered gently in aromatic stock – sweet with yellow rock sugar (melted to deep caramel brown in a wok first) and fragrant with spices – star anise, cloves and Sichuan pepper, amongst others. Once cooked and cooled completely, the meat is sliced, then laid out on a bed of celery and adorned with seasonings: chilli oil, soy sauce, sesame seeds and peanuts.

Two hours later I was lost in the scent of anise and beef when I suddenly came to, realising I’d taken my eye off the ball and overcooked it; the meat was dry. I kicked myself briefly then engaged in an emergency spooning of cooking liquor over meat, which seemed to soothe, restore and re-juice. The broth even paid back a double dose of love the next day, as a base for an outrageously hot noodle soup.

We ate it with this fiery cucumber salad (I’m dependent) and some steamed aubergines which were, sadly, practically inedible. I used the small, slender variety but found them incredibly bitter and in need of a good salting; our faces puckered inside out and the plate was hastily pushed aside. The dipping sauce was, teasingly, a definite keeper.

Sichuan food is such an intense experience and one that I find incredibly addictive. A few hours later, I got the bug all over again and set about making dan dan mian: a classic noodle dish with additions of fried minced pork and some typically concentrated seasonings. You arrange your bits and bobs in a bowl, then plonk the noodles on top and stir; nuggets of slightly crispy meat and funky preserved vegetable nestle in a slippery tangle. And so it was complete: a comfort food feast of the highest order and enough to raise a smile from even the grumpiest blogger.

Man and Wife Meat Slices (from ‘Sichuan Cookery’ by Fuchsia Dunlop)

500g beef braising steak, in one piece
30-40g unpeeled fresh ginger
1 tablespoon groundnut oil
20g rock sugar, crushed
1 litre pork stock (Fuchsia uses her own recipe here)
1 1/2 tablespoons salt
2 spring onions, cut into thirds
1 teaspoon whole Sichuan pepper
1.2 cinnamon stick or a few bits of cassia bark
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
2 star anise
4 cloves (pinch off the little powdery heads and discard)

To serve

3-4 sticks celery or Chinese celery
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1-2 tablespoons chilli oil, with chilli flakes (sediment)
1/2 teaspoon toasted (in a dry pan but be really careful, it burns easily) and ground Sichuan pepper
2 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds
2 tablespoons roasted peanuts, crushed
Coriander leaves

Bring a pan of water to the boil and blanch the beef in it for 10-20 seconds then throw away the water and rinse the meat under the tap.

Heat the oil with half the rock sugar in a wok over a gentle heat and when the sugar melts, turn the heat up and boil until it is a caramel colour. Fill a small coffee cup with water and throw it in the wok, standing back as it will steam and spit. Transfer the liquid to a saucepan.

Add the stock, the remaining sugar, salt, ginger (crushed a bit with a heavy object), spring onions and spices then bring to a boil and add the beef. Return to the boil, cover and reduce to simmer gently for about an hour and a half until tender. Remove the beef from the pan, reserving the liquid, and allow it to cool completely.

De-string the celery sticks and slice them thinly and use any small leaves too. Scatter it over the base of your serving plate. Thinly slice the beef (against the grain) and lay it on top. Mix four tablespoons of the reserved cooking liquid with the soy sauce and poor over the meat. Add chilli oil to taste, then scatter over the Sichuan pepper, sesame seeds, peanuts and coriander.

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.