Despite having cooked approximately 20 Sichuan dishes from The Mission Chinese Cookbook and All Under Heaven, I had entirely neglected cooking any from the much revered Food of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop. Looking for a quick stir-fry, I decided to do one last-minute tonight. This book turned out to be an excellent resource for learning about Sichuan cooking and eating; while it seems long, the first 60 pages of background material are packed with useful information for an aspiring Sichuan chef! The other cookbooks I mentioned familiarized me with basic ingredients and dishes of the region. The background material in Dunlop’s book covers the many canonical flavor profiles and cooking techniques as well as the different manners in which the people of Sichuan would value and enjoy a given dish. For example, texture is very important in Sichuan dishes. Reading this section made me really want to try fire-exploded kidney and jellyfish so I could see what all the fuss was about pertaining to their unique textures.

Gong Bao Chicken (also commonly transcribed as Kung Pao Chicken) is a Chinese stir-fry, meaning in a commercial kitchen it will be cooked over a burner with almost ten times the heat output compared to a residential stovetop burner. Because of this, I opt to use two burners on my 15-inch cast iron to get a similar effect. The heat builds up in the middle of the pan for when I need it to rapidly cook the chicken, but until then, I cook off to the side where there is less heat content.

This dish features a “lychee-flavored” sauce, meaning the flavor profile is sweet-sour (and does not actually contain lychee.) I took a lot of care to cut everything to even proportions, to good effect. I’d recommend doubling the number of chiles and peppercorns and throwing in a few extra scallions too.

Tasting notes: This dish was very good. It isn’t as spicy or numbing as some Sichuan dishes I’ve had, but perhaps that is appropriate for Gong Bao Chicken. The sauce works well, contributing gummy bits of deeply savory flavor when found in a bit.

Joe’s rating: 6.5
Difficulty 5