51�Թ�

After weeks of lockdown privation, the more iron-stomached among China’s diners craved a proper Sichuan-style hot pot, with fiery chili peppers and mouth-numbing prickly ash pods bobbing across a cauldron of red broth.

A morsel swiped in the dark red sauce, lightly numbing with prickly ash and roaring with fried chiles, finds you speed eating like a cartoon character.

Its garnish of wok-roasted prickly ash has the same pleasant numbing effect on the tongue as Sichuan peppercorns.

Sichuan peppercorns, the dried seed pods of the prickly ash, are actually not a kind of pepper, but a spice that delivers tongue-tingling heat with a citrus accent.

They’re the dried citrus berries of the prickly ash tree, and they produce sensations unlike anything you’ll experience from a standard black peppercorn.