Mala awakens your senses.
The colors, smells, and flavors you see and taste.
When you first eat it, it’s so hot it jolts you.
Then, it feels numbing and spicy.
There are different layers to mala.
where we uncover the stories of the food we eat.
In this season, we’re going back to basics,
to the building blocks of Chinese flavor.
Let’s talk about mala.
Mala literally means “numbing” and “spicy.”
It’s a unique Chinese flavor.
After it got popular in recent years,
people started producing a huge variety of mala-flavored items,
from hot pot, to chips, to ice-cream, and even beer.
People love the tingling sensation it leaves on the tongue.
To answer that, we have to go to the birthplace of mala.
Mala awakens your senses.
This is Zhu Yingxiao.
He runs a restaurant in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan.
When we cook mala dishes,
we use chili and Sichuan peppercorn.
We need these two ingredients.
Sichuan is incredibly humid.
In traditional Chinese medicine, when the body is damp,
you get health problems like headaches and rashes.
To get rid of the dampness,
locals eat mala food to sweat it out.
This practice started around the late 15th century
after chili arrived in China.
Mala is used to make hot pots,
skewers, dry pots, and cold dishes.
I like to use mala in dishes where you simmer the food.
Cook the ingredients with water first, then season it.
We mix, chop, and fry three types of chilies.
We use two types of facing heaven peppers,
and tabasco peppers.
We fry them with peppercorns.
This technique is called “kang,”
where we fry the chilies and peppercorn in a wok.
We do this until the chilies bloat up.
They’ll turn crispy when they’re cooled.
Then, we rock-chop them.
Lastly, we pour boiling oil onto the chilies
and minced garlic.
Mala is the icon of Sichuan food.
Mala’s thought of as a flavor. But it’s actually just a sensation.
There are two types of chemicals in the spices.
The hydroxy-alpha sanshool in Sichuan peppercorn
creates the buzzy, numbing feeling.
It’s a molecule in peppercorn that stimulates the cells
that detect the sensation of touch.
This is chemistry professor Dennis Chan.
The molecules stop the tongue from receiving signals
so you can’t feel the food in your mouth.
So your mouth feels numb.
It's starting to spread all over my mouth.
The second chemical is capsaicin from chili,
which sets off the fire alarms in your mouth.
They stimulate the receptors that detect heat inside our mouth
so we think that our mouth is hot.
When it feels hotter and hotter, it hurts.
It’s like we need to escape (from this heat).
So our brain releases endorphins.
It relieves the pain and makes us feel happy.
That’s why we are addicted to it.
You will crave mala food.
Then you'll feel happy after eating it.
Eventually, It becomes a habit.
That’s how mala quickly built a following in China,
even in regions that usually avoid spicy food.
People around the world also started getting into mala,
some attracted by the novelty of that tingly feeling.
I went to a food conference in Oxford.
I took along some really good Sichuan pepper
and I was offering it to people to try.
And one food scholar, this man,
he thought I was trying to poison him.
This is Fuchsia Dunlop,
an award-winning food writer
who’s also an expert on Chinese food.
Now, people are familiar with what Sichuan pepper is
and with the sensation, so it's not so scary anymore.
It's certainly also popular in America now.
After China's reform and opening up,
there was a whole new generation
of Chinese people moving abroad.
They, particularly young people,
have taken with them this fashion for Sichuanese food
and for the mala flavor.
In Britain,
it's not really in the mainstream.
However, people who are a bit more adventurous
are getting to know it.
The interest in mala really started picking up in the last 10 years.
We're just at the beginning
because there are so many possibilities for using mala
in all kinds of snacks and all kinds of dishes.
I can see that mala could be very nice with sort of sweet biscuits,
with a bit of saltiness,
dishes maybe that use salted caramel.
Also, perhaps with fruit.
Strawberries are very nice with black pepper.
It's just so exciting and stimulating,
so it really stands out from the crowd.
Mala became something of an overnight sensation.
But it left people thinking it was the only flavor in Sichuan.
A lot of people love Sichuan mala food
But they think that they’ve had Sichuan food
just because they had something mala.
That’s wrong.
Sichuan cuisine actually has 24 key flavors.
That includes non-spicy options,
like food that’s smoked,
sweet and sour, and savory.
What is the essence of Sichuan cuisine?
Some say it’s mala.
Others say it depends on the dish.
Meet Lu Xiaodong, a chef and food critic from Sichuan.
I think the most special thing about Sichuan cuisine
is how it brings everything together.
Especially because immigrants and ancient war refugees
came to Sichuan.
That led to an exchange of culture, capital,
lifestyles, and things, which includes food.
Zhu spent years perfecting flavors outside of mala.
One of his restaurant’s signature dishes
is Melon Bird’s Nest Soup,
which packs an umami punch.
For example, Melon Bird’s Nest Soup,
we boil chicken, duck, pork belly, and ham to create a stock.
Then, we clarify it.
The melon strands are like bird's nests.
They have the same texture and flavor.
What does it taste like?
The winter melon is crunchy and the ham is umami.
Umami is all I can say about this soup.
Sichuan cuisine is evolving so quickly.
The mala craze won’t last forever.
After it fades, people will want to dig into Sichuan cuisine.
As a small restaurant owner,
I feel responsible for educating others about Sichuan food.
So people can discover the different Sichuan flavors
in my restaurant.
That’s why I put a lot of effort into my cooking.
The restaurant’s like my child.
We’ll talk about the wok,
the one pan to rule them all.
Stay tuned.
If you have to pick one dish that represents Sichuan cuisine,
what will you choose?
Sichuan cuisine…
Is it because you like too many dishes?
Which dish do you eat the most?
Stir-fried tomato and egg.
Stir-fried tomato and egg is not Sichuan cuisine.