Thanks for your responses. I will take into account your preference for non-sweetness in your dishes, particularly Chinese ones. I am sure that I, along with many Americans, have been conditioned by American Chinese food, which I don’t see as a necessarily bad thing. I’ll certainly opt to make foods a bit sweeter on account of my eight year old, as I would much rather cook a dish that “the whole family” can enjoy rather than make separate dishes according to each individual’s tastes.

Thanks for your suggestions about the Sichuan peppercorns. That will save me a lot of labor in the future.

Yes, I was also surprised about the hot and sour soup recipe. Yes, you did comment that the galangal was difficult to cut, but the only piece of information which I had retained between reading the recipe and cooking it was that “galangal is a relative of ginger”. Sometimes things have to be stressed for them to enter my brain, and I was particularly bummed that, after working so hard to cut the *#&@! galanagal that it added so little flavor after an hour of simmering. I was expecting a ripe, pungent broth, but, instead, it tasted like plain old chicken broth. If I had had more time, I would have simmered it longer, but, alas, I didn’t. Will others have the same experience as I did? That’s hard to tell. I like to think that I followed your instructions faithfully and competently, and I did use lemon grass and galangal which I purchased that day, but I’ve been known to moronify instructions from time to time. In any event, I think it’s helpful to forewarn people that simmering lemon grass and galangal for an hour might be insufficient for their own tastes and to schedule enough time in the event that such is the case.

Again, great site, and I hope that my making your recipes is a compliment to you.

You are noticing that few of my recipes are particularly sweet. That is because I am generally using more traditional Chinese recipes and methods, where the food is not particularly sweet. Most Chinese American restaurant food is very sweet, and includes significant amounts of white or brown sugar, or sometimes honey, in the sauces. I don’t care for that sort of sweetness–in fact, I tend to really dislike that, so whenever you make any of my dishes, you might want to keep that in mind.

As for the peppercorns, the only part of them I remove are any little thorny twigs attached to the pericarp or just floating around in the packet. Those do not grind well and I don’t want anyone to get a thorn caught in their throat!

I just pick those out, then toast and grind the seeds and pericarps as needed.

When you commented on the hot and sour soup recipe, I was surprised. No one else has ever had such a problem getting good flavor from that recipe. It must depend on how fresh the lemongrass and galangal you use are. Galangal, frozen or fresh, should be quite flavorful–but yes, it is rock hard. (I think I said that in the post!) I use a heavy meat cleaver to cut it. Frozen or fresh lemongrass works as well, but fresh is better, and the fresher it is the more flavorful it is.

If you get either of them fresh and they are sort of dried out and the lemongrass is flaky and leathery, it doesn’t have much flavor. If the galangal is dried out or moldy or flaky and even more rock hard, with no moisture inside, it will have much less flavor.

I must admit that I was hoping to replicate the “crispy beef” recipe at the Sichuan restaurant near my house. I was sad to discover that the texture was not the same, and, in fact, less preferable. The beef in the dish at the restaurant (I think that meat is deep-fried) is crispy on the outside and chewy in the center. The beef in the dish I made last night was, as foretold by Barbara, closer to the texture of beef jerky. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing — I love the beef jerky that my mother-in-law makes in New Mexico, where it’s dry enough to make beef jerky in any room of the house. It just wasn’t what I was looking for. My jaw got kind of tired of the chewing as I was nearing the end of the plate.

The flavor of the dish was spot-on except for one complaint: I wanted it to be sweeter, and the recipe as-is is in no way swee. Since we are presently eating low-carb, I used light soy sauce (and we had no rice, either), but I’m thinking that if I make this dish again (and I’m not low-carbing), then I might opt for dark soy sauce, thick soy sauce, or opt for adding some brown sugar to the recipe.

The beans were delicious, as was everything else in the dish, but they and everything else got a little lost in the chew-chew-chew of the beef. That’s unfortunate.

Making this dish was very tiresome on my hand and arm. I think I will wear a wrist brace the next time I try and make something so physically demanding.

One more word about Sichuan peppercorns. I am aware that the flavor and heat resides in the pericarp, not in the seed, so I meticulously picked out seeds and stems from my little box of Sichuan peppercorns. This was a pain. Is it necessary, or should I next time choose to just toast and grind the whole lot?

I am glad that the dish turned out well, anyway–there are several recipes from China where meat is cooked crispy like that, and then sauced as you did, so it is perfectly well authentic.

I bet it tasted fantastic.