Bit by bit, the taste filled my mouth - fragrant and a little bit sour. The tingling moved from my tongue to my lips - it was a good tingling, not painful. My mouth started buzzing, dancing with a fizzy heat. Well, I couldn't resist that challenge, so I popped a peppercorn into my mouth and chomped down hard. He told me a Swiss visitor had tried, but couldn't handle it. My teacher at the school, Li Jianqing, challenged me to bite into a Sichuan peppercorn. That was one lesson among many I learned during the day I spent at the school. When they're dried, the peppercorns turn a beautiful purple, and they're used with abandon in many dishes.ДЄnd there's another use: I've learned that you can put a peppercorn in your mouth to numb a toothache. It's an aromatic berry from the prickly ash tree. In fact, the Sichuan peppercorn isn't a pepper at all. These peppercorns are not to be confused with hot red chili peppers. It comes from the Sichuan peppercorn, hua jiao, which translates to 'flower pepper.' Ma means 'numbing' in Chinese, and that numbing sensation is a distinctive characteristic of Sichuan food. And in the time I spent in Chengdu, I grew especially intrigued by a singular Sichuan sensation: ma. Sichuan food is famous for its mouth-numbing, spicy heat. The school reopened just a couple of days after the earthquake. It's a prestigious cooking school in Chengdu that is training the next generation of chefs. Now, here's one of those stories, from a day I spent at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine in April. Naturally, the earthquake put those stories on hold. I had planned to do one story a day on the food of Sichuan, which is justly famous and utterly delicious. I had been in Chengdu in April, gathering material for stories to air the next month. The earthquake hit the day after I arrived in Chengdu.

When we decided to do a week of All Things Considered broadcasts from Chengdu, China, in May, little did we imagine that we'd find ourselves covering an 8.0 magnitude earthquake.

Kung po kanaa