Fried String Beans - Sichuan Style

 

 I am sure most among us do enjoy having Chinese food especially while eating out.Chinese Food in India is ubiquitous, be it small road side stalls selling "chow mien" and "manchurian" or up market establishments serving variety of mouth watering prawn or  seafood dishes.It is only after coming to China and tasting the different varieties of Chinese food I understood  that Indianized version of Chinese food is completely different from the Authentic Chinese cuisine (probably because Chinese dishes in India is customized for the Indian palate).

Also there are different varieties of Chinese food, which varies from the province to province, ranging from spicy Sichuan or Hunan to slightly sweet Shanghainese. Also there are vast arrays of spices and ingredients for preparation. Also apart from mind boggling range of non-vegetarian dishes, there are numerous vegetarian dishes that are available here(earlier I never had anything possibly apart from Veg Manchurian).

Whenever we visit a chinese restaurant in Shanghai we make a point to always order a plate of Fried String Beans specially Sichuan style.There is a veg and a non veg version of fried beans,here is the veg version .You can enjoy the authentic Chinese flavor at home with this simple dish.Fried string beans is a excellent appetizer. Sichuan Pepper (called Tirphal in India used in some Konkani dishes) is an essential  ingredient in many chinese food specially in Sichuan cuisine.This is a beautiful ingredient with a curious taste; when the whole pepper is used it causes a funny tingling numbness in the mouth and the powdered pepper gives you the flavor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper ) 

                                                                                             

                                                                                          
Prep time : 10 mins

Cooking time : 10 mins

Serves : 2 

    Ingredients:

• 250 gm Fresh green beans
• 1 tsp  Cooking Wine
• 1tsp Sesame Oil
• 1 tsp Soya Sauce
• 6 dry Red Chilies
• 1 tsp Sichuan Pepper (freshly ground)
• Salt
• Oil for deep frying

 Step by step illustration:

Rinse and cut the ends of the string beans.

Deep fry the string beans until it gets a slightly wrinkly texture.

Drain and keep them on paper towel to remove extraStir fry garlic and dry red chilies on medium heat. 

Mix cooking wine, sesame oil and soya sauce in a bowl.

Add string beans to the above mixture along with sichuan pepper and salt .

Stir on high flame for not more then 2 mins and switch off the heat.

Ready to serve hot with steam rice

Rinse and cut the ends of the       

string beans.

Note: 

While frying high heat is to be used and minimum liquid and this technique is called dry-frying which is used to prepare a lot of different Chinese dishes.

If at all sichuan pepper and cooking wine is not available you can use black pepper and white wine respectively. Black pepper wont give you the exact flavor of the dish, white wine is a good replacement of cooking wine.