Mouthwatering Chicken (Kou Shui Ji)
Kou shui ji is one of the great cold appetisers of Sichuan cuisine, a benchmark by which any aspiring Sichuanese cook is judged. It belongs to the broader family of cold chicken dishes (liang ban ji) that also includes bobo ji and bang bang ji, but kou shui ji is set apart by its sauce: not just spicy, but a complex layering of mala (numbing-hot) Sichuan pepper oil, fragrant chilli oil with its crisp sediment, deep aged black vinegar, sweet stone-ground sesame paste, and the concentrated chicken essence captured from steaming. The dish is uncooked at the assembly stage, which makes ingredient quality non-negotiable: cheap supermarket chilli oil and tahini will produce a sad, muddy version. Difficulty for a home cook is low if you have the right pantry; the only technical step is the gentle steaming, which yields more flavourful meat and crucial savoury juices than poaching does. The visual is striking, pale chicken slices half-submerged in a pool of red oil, scattered with chopped peanuts, sesame seeds and bright green scallion tops. Serve as a starter, on rice, or over cold noodles; the leftover sauce is too good to waste.