Yum yum, slobber slobber, drool. 

My latest Cantonese Podcast CantoNews from Exile got me all drooling and hungry, for in it ah-Hei started talking about food. Yes, Chinese food. She wanted to know the Cantonese words for a series of ingredients so she would be able to speak with more confidence in her Chinese (Sheffield) supermarket next time. 

Funnily enough, of all the ingredients she mentioned; red sugar, white radish, jasmine rice and carrots, I have only ever used carrot - red radish or red turnip in Chinese - (apart from ginger, but that goes without saying) and that in a dish I have half invented myself. Why not the other things? Because, although I loved Hong Kong and almost everything in it, the local food, bland and chilli-less as it is, wasn't really on top of the love list. 

No, I had to travel further afield, to the foothills of the Himalayas almost, to find the food of my life: Sichuan food. 

After a month working there as a volunteer English teacher I was hooked on the colourful and fiery cuisine; in fact after the very first lunch in that verdant province I was hooked, and as soon as I got back to Hong Kong I went to Chengdu to take a course in Sichuan cooking. One of the dishes was Gongbao Chicken, a well known Sichuan dish also known as Kung Pao Chicken or sometimes Spicy Chicken with Chillies and Cashews.

I have tasted so many variations of this I can’t count them, and the only thing they had in common was the chicken. The worst, or least good ones are the ones with fried cucumber. Cucumber should never be cooked. 

At the cooking course the chef used green turnip as vegetable, but I thought it was too bitter, so I started using delicious lotus root

instead. I’m the only one (that I know of) who uses crunchy lotus root in gongbao chicken, and also carrot for colour and more crunch. It's an impressive and complicated looking dish, and serving it is guaranteed to give you enormous face among your peers.

But how to cook it, you ask? Just get my book CHILL!ies, Sichuan Food made Easy! Or if you can't be arsed to cook, hop over to my gaff in El Terreno for a taste. 

Full disclosure, the title photo, the "Sichuan food in beautiful surroundings" one is from my roof terrace in Hong Kong. However I have a  terrace here in Palma too. It is at least semi beautiful, so it counts! 

I can cook for up to 14 people. 

Oh, and Learn Cantonese the Natural Way, from a Norwegian! You can take lessons online - and now also learn completely gratis, from my podcast CantoNews from Exile! 

Today's Cantonese: 宮保雞丁 Gong bou gai deng  Palace Guard Chicken Cubes