It's funny how the "correct" modern transliteration for the spicy Chinese regional cuisine that I learned and loved as "Szechwan" has become "Sichuan" in recent years, but once I figured out that "Szechwan" was the old patriarchal colonialist "We'll tell you how to spell your name" thing, I'm down with the modern form. Which is actually probably something like "川菜", if I'm spelling that right.But that's not important right now. What's important is that I threw together a pretty quick, pretty good Sichuanese dinner on short notice tonight.
* Sliced and diced a half-block of leftover tofu that needed to be used pretty soon, and cut about 8 ounces of fresh snow peas into similar-size chunks. Whacked a smallish sweet onion into similar squares, and stir-fried them all together with a bunch of minced garlic and ginger, some dried red-pepper flakes, black pepper and (shhh!) some green El Yucateco green habanero sauce.
* After the stir-fry was fried, I hit it with a quick sauce mix of Chinese black beans and garlic, soy sauce, a shot of leftover Oloroso sherry, a shake of brown sugar and a good squeeze of lemon juice.
* Simmer briefly to finish, check seasonings, thicken with a bit of cornstarch and serve with rice. Dinner probably didn't take 30 minutes to finish - 45, tops - and tasted just fine.