A spice so hot it cools

I didn’t see it coming, that mild feeling of electric currents buzzing on my tongue as if I’d licked a battery.

Seated on a busy pavement in front of a lazy Susan weighed down with sizzling hotpot, diced rabbit and fish soup, I was digging into a spicy meal on the humid first night of a visit to Chengdu, the capital of China’s south-western Sichuan province and the cradle of the region’s famously fiery cuisine.

The plates resembled volcanic islands, each dish’s contents swimming in chilli oil hidden beneath a red-hot mountain of peppers and garlic. Tongue ablaze and face flushed, I felt a prickliness starting to numb my taste buds. The waiter chuckled at my glistening forehead and handed me a handkerchief; it was clear who at the table was the foreigner not yet acclimated to local flavours.

Unsettling at first, that tingly feeling of electricity offered a pleasant reprieve from the heat. This curious effect was thanks to one of the most integral ingredients in this province’s distinctive cuisine: the tiny-but-mighty Sichuan peppercorn, a spice indigenous to China.

The seasoning’s English label is a misnomer, as the “peppercorns” are actually husks of dried berries from a type of prickly ash shrub. When you eat chillies, capsaicin induces a burning sensation known in Chinese as là. Sichuan peppercorns produce a phenomenon called paraesthesia, in which the lips and tongue feel as though they are vibrating and go vaguely numb – known as má. Together, the tandem combination of burning and numbing from these two ingredients is known in Chinese as málà, a hallmark of Sichuan cuisine that facilitates sweating – and thus creates a cooling effect that makes the sweltering climate more tolerable.

“The level of humidity in Sichuan can make you feel lethargic and uncomfortable,” said Cheng Yi, who owns the Cheng Big Mouth Frog restaurant, which specialises in Sichuan-style frog stew, in the nearby city of Chongqing. “Sichuan peppercorn not only adds fragrance but also helps combat dampness.” According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, the human body’s constitutions are intimately connected with the surrounding environment. Highly humid weather, which Chengdu experiences year-round, is said to create dampness in the body, which can lead to headaches and bloating. Eating spicy food and sweating can mitigate the adverse physiological effects of humidity.

“We always joke that if you have a cold, just go eat a meal of potently málà food and you’ll recover,” Cheng quipped. “By eliminating toxins from the body through sweating, you’ll feel much better the next day.”

I indeed felt cooler as the meal wore on, despite sitting outside in the moist air. And despite not feeling hungry at first, my stomach became a bottomless pit as I continued eating; the Sichuan peppercorn was also soothing my mouth with its vaguely anaesthetic prickliness, enabling me to eat more by rendering the spice of the chillies a little less fiery.

“When it’s humid in the summer, your appetite isn’t as good. But stimulating flavours can spur you to eat more,” said Gan Siqi, a born-and-bred Chengdu native and avid cook.

The cuisine’s restorative effects seem to have given Sichuan food a reputation within China for being rather irresistible. Gan frequently cooks Sichuan dishes for out-of-town guests and has seen many unwittingly get hooked on the cuisine.

BBC