Sichuan, Hunan, Yunnan

Sichuan is the largest province in China and the cuisine is distinguished by liberal use of chillies. The flavour of Sichuan cuisine is a brilliant freak, which breaks all the rules and gets away with it. However, there is also logic in the blends of sauces. The purpose of chilli peppers is not to paralyse the tongue, but to stimulate the palate. Actually Sichuan cooking is splendidly manifold in flavours embracing hot, sweet, sour, salty and fragrant often all at once.
Because of the region's humidity, the preservation of food takes top priority. Salting, drying, pickling and smoking are traditionally all employed. Pungent vegetables like onions, garlic and ginger feature predominently, as do aromatic sesame, peanuts, soy bean products and fermented black soy beans. Together they produce a piquant spiciness characteristic of so many Sichuan dishes. Mushrooms and bamboo shoots characterise many dishes of the land-locked peasantry.
Neighbouring Hunan features hotter dishes, but Hunan cooking is peripheral to Sichuan and very similar in essence.
Yunnan grows magnificent teas, especially the exotic Pu-Erh, sometimes aged for up to 100 years before being served at banquets. The best known product is Yunnan ham, rather like Spanish Serrano, but the Chinese consider it the best in the world.

The Szechuan (Sichuan) Preparation - The Emerging Chinese Taste

Szechuan preparation has become the prominent Chinese food in current times. The quantity of being hot, sour, sweet and salty, having a strange taste or using fish sauce, these become aspect of the Sichuan preparation.
Szechuan cuisine has grown in popularity. Earlier, the lower strata people in the society would prefer and relish such type of preparation. These aspects have become common and basic to the standard Chinese cuisine. Szechuan recipes were originally thought of as a cuisine with ginger, mustard, chives or onions. The flavour was pungent and since then the Szechuan cuisine has this feature. In fact, many dishes have pungent flavour that come especially from the Szechuan region. It is region that abounds animals, poultry and creatures. It is not close to ocean, yet it has freshwater fish and crayfish. Fish items form a part of the Szechuan preparation equivocally just like Cantonese or Hunan cuisine.
Szechuan region is known for its humidity and dampness. Days are rainy and sky is overcast most of the time. Hot food has become a practice and the Szechuan cuisine is the common man's preparation unlike other ones that are eaten by people belonging to the upper middle class or the rich. Most people prefer the Szechuan cuisine since it goes well with rice which is the staple crop. Generally, people in china eat doubly cooked pork with chilli sauce, shredded pork with chilli sauce and fish flavour, carp with thick broad bean sauce and boiled meat slices. Szechuan cuisine is a household one.
Szechuan recipes have many flavours. Each dish has its own characteristics and unique flavour. Szechuan region has many flavourings and seasonings to offer in it. Soy sauce, cooking vinegars, fermented soy beans, hot pickled mustard tubers, chilli sauce, thick, broad bean sauce and salts become ingredients of Szechuan cuisine.
Flavouring material supplement the skills of the cook to give a novel touch to the Szechuan recipe. By permuting and combining different seasoning, a skilled can come out with varieties of sauces that could include creamy, salty, sweet and sour with chilli, hot with chilli, spicy and hot, mashed garlic, and fish sauce with chilli, ginger sauce and soy sauce. Further, the same sauce is differently used in different dishes. If you use hot with chilli sauce for boiled sliced pork, you get a different taste when you use hot with chili sauce with pork-marked Lady's bean curd.