Recipe: 'Ma la' Sichuan Cranberry Sauce
Vegan Christmas stuffing spring rolls with Sichuan cranberry sauce
Here’s a great way to spice up your Christmas meal – literally. I recently prepared this cranberry sauce for the #ChineseFoodiesofIG potluck meet–up that I regularly host, and it was an unexpected hit. The theme was ‘Have Yourself A Very Chinglish Christmas’, somewhat tongue–in–cheek, but the level of creativity from attendees was very impressive! My contribution was vegan Christmas stuffing spring rolls, paired with this Sichuan flavour infused cranberry sauce.
The classic Sichuan ‘ma la’ flavour pairing, which combines ‘ma’ / 麻 (mouth numbing) with ‘la’ / 辣 (spicy), adds a surprising and pleasant twist to the sweet cranberry sauce. My advice would be to buy a good quality cranberry sauce that doesn’t have too high a sugar content and retains some tartness. It would be great as a dip on the Christmas table to go with turkey, gammon, sprouts, stuffing, root vegetables… just about anything, really!
This sauce is incredibly easy to make and you only need three ingredients and a food processor. A spice grinder or smoothie blender (with dry setting blade) will also do; or you can go old school and crush the peppercorns by hand.
Let me know if you try this recipe and share your results on Instagram with #CelestialPeach.
Ingredients
~250g store bought cranberry sauce
1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
1 tbsp chilli flakes or 1–2 small red chillies
Instructions
In a spice grinder or food processor, blitz the Sichuan peppercorns until fine and powdery.
Add in chilli flakes or fresh chillies and blitz further.
Stir the spice blend into the cranberry sauce and mix well.
Allow the sauce to sit for a few hours before serving.
