Mala Spicy Chilled King Oyster Mushroom Salad 麻辣涼拌杏鮑菇

Hey hobbits out there, doncha just love, love, love mushrooms?  Then this is the dish for you!  Meaty mushrooms marinated in spicy mala sauce and a splash of numbing sichuan pepper oil, sprinkled with aromatics and then chilled to perfection.  This Mala Spicy Chilled King Oyster Mushroom Salad 麻辣涼拌杏鮑菇 is super easy to make and absolutely shroomy-licious!

Spicy Mala Peanuts 麻辣花生

We made the most crazily delicious peanut snack ever - the Spicy Mala Peanuts  麻辣花生 - fried peanuts flavored with a mouthwatering mix of spices and fired up with hot chilies and tongue numbing Sichuan pepper.  This snack has been all the rage in recent years, rising in popularity along with the Sichuan Spicy Stews that have become ubiquitous.  (Psst...check out our Sichuan Spicy Fish Stew 水煮魚 recipe.)

OMgosh but these peanuts are soooo additive!  Once you start eating these luscious spice coated, tongue numbing bits of peanut crunchiness you just can't stop!  So aromatic!  So yummilicious!  Now you can enjoy making Spicy Mala Peanuts 麻辣花生 at home for a fraction of the cost of buying them from the store!

Spicy Minced Watercress Salad 爆淹西洋菜

 A most interesting fact: the humble watercress is one of the oldest leaf vegetable consumed by humankind!  I love food facts like that, they really do tickle the imagination, allowing the mind to travel far into the past to marvel at the simple things that connect us across the dunes of time.

We mostly use watercress to make soup as it imparts a lovely flavor.  Stir frying with a touch of garlic is also a nice way to have watercress.  Recently I read about another way to prepare watercress that I have been most eager to try.  This easy to prepare refreshing Spicy Minced Watercress Salad  爆淹西洋菜 is deliciously crisp and slightly peppery with a hint of sesame.

Spicy Indian Baked Chicken Masaledar Murghi

Something easy and super tasty for dinner, right, that's what everyone wants?  This is the second post about our adventures into real Indian cuisine, about our mini Indian feast that we indulged in starting with the vegetarian dish Spicy Indian Potato Cauliflower Aloo Gobi that we wrote about the other day.  

To go with these delicious dry curry vegetable dish we made this super easy Indian Spicy Baked Chicken Masaledar Murghi, a tender, fragrant, super spiced up meat dish.

Spicy Indian Potato Cauliflower Aloo Gobi

Every once in a while we like to dip into far away cuisines for a taste of the exotic, to travel by dint of our tastebuds.  It's so much fun to treat yourself to a completely different world of textures, tastes and aromas!  

One of the old cuisines that I find really interesting (besides Chinese cuisine, of course)  is Indian cuisine.  What a spectacular, varied and long lived food culture!  

Recently we had a serious craving for Indian food and thus whipped up a mini Indian feast for ourselves.  Gorgeously spice infused vegetarian and meat dishes paired against a tart and refreshing cucumber yogurt dish, all of this eaten with deliciously fresh handmade chapatis.  This is the yummilicious vegetarian dish we made, the Spicy Indian Potato Cauliflower, also known as Aloo Gobi.