This week’s dish shall be Mala, as it uses many Spices and ingredients that serve to bring out the flavor of spiciness. 2 key Chinese ingredients in mala is Sichuan Peppercorn and dried red chilli.
The use of Sichuan Peppercorn can be traced to Northern China, where it was frequently used in their food as the Sichuan Basin was an isolated land encircled by mountains. This therefore meant that the air there was foggy and damp. Sichuan peppercorn was thus used to combat the buildup of ‘dampness’ in a person’s body.
Red Chili was introduced from other countries, where the most widely accepted view was that it was introduced from Indian missionaries through the Silk Road. However, there are also some claims that they may have been introduced earlier through Spanish and Portuguese trade routes. While different parts of China had varying degrees of acceptance to red chilli, Sichuan quickly adopted it into their cuisines.
This combination of Sichuan Peppercorn and red chilli ultimately led to the creation of mala, which is named after its key ingredient-mala sauce. Mala sauce is a combination of Sichuan peppercorn to produce the numbing, tingling taste and red chilli, to produce the spicy element. The origin of mala is widely believed to have come from the Yangtze River near Sichuan. Similar to Sichuan itself, the weather there was cold and damp and thus boat workers used mala in their hot pots to eliminate the dampness in their bodies.
Mala soon started to spread as it became a street food that was particularly popular in Beijing, China. This saw a change in cooking style as instead of a hot pot where food is put in like in Sichuan, ingredients are now cooked and served on skewers. Soon, Mala spreaded to many parts of the world and became the version which we see today, where it is often stir fried. Shortcuts for making mala soon appeared as it became more and more commercialized. The mala sauce is now sold in bottles instead of having to be cooked from scratch. It can thus be simply used to stir fry or poured into hot pots without the need for its traditional ingredients. Even more recently, instant noodles have also come up with a type of instant mala, whereby just adding hot water is all that is needed.
References
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