Sausages fit for a festival

With its unique style among plentiful Chinese dishes, Sichuan cuisine is well-known at home and abroad.

It is said that epicurean Sichuan people eat whenever in a good mood or in a bad mood; in good weather or in bad weather; they are willing to go a long way to savour well-made Sichuan foods in a small but famous restaurant hidden in a certain mean lane.

Many of them are also willing to make time-consuming dishes in their own kitchens before they finally settle down at the dining table.

Take the simple food of smoked Sichuan sausage, for example.

The Sichuan sausage is not so famous as such dishes as the mouth-watering Stir-fried Boiled Chicken Slices with Hot Sauce (Xiao Jian Ji), Sichuan Smoked Duck (Zhang Cha Ya), Braised Fish with Red Hot Chili and Sichuan Bean sauce (Dou Banr Xian Yu), or Fried Sliced Pork with Chili and Pepper (Hui Guo Rou).

But it is almost everyone's favourite food in Southwest China's Sichuan Province. It is so common a dish that it has become a must-have for most Sichuan style banquets, especially those during the Spring Festival season.

Most Sichuan sausages on sale today in big cities are machine produced on a massive scale.

But most rural families in Sichuan Province still prepare the dish with their own hands in their own kitchens months ahead of Spring Festival when farmers have a good harvest and their live stock are in good shape in winter.

The Sichuan sausage is not very hot and spicy as some typical Sichuan dishes such as Mouth-numbing Fish (Ma La Yu), or the Fried tofu with Hot Sauce and Pepper (Ma Po Dou Fu). Nor is it sweet as that type made in South China's Guangdong Province.

The specifics for the making of the Sichuan sausage vary widely even within Sichuan Province. Different families and restaurants may also follow their own secret recipes handed down from the older generations.

But generally speaking, the native specialty in Sichuan is mainly produced with such basic ingredients as shredded fresh pork, with a fair percentage for both fat and lean meats, dotted with fried peanuts and fried sesame.

Sometimes, Sichuan people also replace pork with tofu, or carrot, or a mixture of glutinous rice and red rice, to make Sichuan sausage for vegetarians.

The Sichuan sausage is then seasoned with dried red chili, cooking starch, soy sauce, wild pepper, green cabbage seed oil, table salt, liquor, slices of old ginger, and star anise - but no food colour or gourmet powder are used, according to widely known traditional recipes.

These materials are stirred and mixed and then put into the natural casing of pig's small intestines. Then it is dried and smoked. The mixed fuel of rice straw and cypress twigs and leaves give the sausage a unique, enchanting fragrance.

In rural areas, ready-made Sichuan sausages, hung in the kitchens where wood and straw are still used as fuel, can be stored in good condition for as long as six months.

After being cooked in boiling water and sliced into oval, flimsy pieces, the smoked Sichuan sausage is often served as a cold dish.

Top quality Sichuan sausage is of melt-in-mouth delicacy but still has some tenacity, giving one an unforgettable after-taste.

The dish goes perfectly with alcoholic drinks during a traditional Sichuan dinner, and of course with beer and wine for today's dinners. Some cooks today have also developed other types of dishes using Sichuan sausage as an indispensable ingredient.

Among the dishes are fried Sichuan sausage and broccoli, fried rice, eggs, and several Chinese style "pizzas" featuring Sichuan cured meat and sausage. Some people also like to dip Sichuan sausage in hot pot before eating it.

Source: China Daily