Schezwan sauce/ Szechuan sauce

 The Schezwan cuisine originates from the sichuan province of china. It is known for its bold, pungent, hot flavors and extravagant usage of red chillies. The schezwan sauce is a fundamental to the schezwan cuisine and goes in most Chinese dishes with its spicy, tangy, slightly sweet and vinegary taste. 

The basic ingredients for this sauces are red chillies, ginger, garlic and spices. It is one of the easiest sauce you could make at home. Culinary uses of schezwan sauce is used in Chinese starters. One of the first things which comes to my mind is, it goes well with veg spring rolls, momos. fried wantons, steamed wantons, fried rice and noodles. This can be used as an accompaniment or dipping sauce for variety of different dishes from nachos, chips and potato wedges.

Schezwan sauce is one of the most popular sauce recipes from the Indo-Chinese cuisine. This sauce has literally gone places travelling around the globe and is used in hundreds of dishes world wide. It is all purpose sauce and must have in all households.

Now let us see the ingredients:

INGREDIENTS:

1. 1/4th cup of oil.
2. 1/4th cup of finely chopped Garlic (Lahsun)
3. 3 tbsp of finely chopped Ginger (Adrak)
4. 2 cups of Dried red chillies (Kashmiri red chillies de-seeded)
5. 1/2 tsp of Crushed Pepper corns
6. 2 tbsp of Vinegar(Cirka)
7. 2 tbsp of Sugar
8. Salt to taste
9. 1/4 cup of Water.
10. 2 tbsp of Tomato sauce.(Use tomato ketchup)
11. 1 Star anise (Chakriphul)
12. 1 tbsp of Coriander stems (Finely chopped)

METHOD:

1. Soak 2 cups of Dried red chillies in a hot water for about a hour.
2. Once the chillies have softened in water then drain the excess water and blend them into a smooth paste.
3. Add little water if required for blending.
4. Next heat 1/4th cup of oil in a pan or kadai. Add finely chopped Garlic, Ginger and saute for 2-3 minutes. Do not burn it. Add 1 Star anise fry it for a minute.
5. Now add blended red chilli paste and combined well. Let it cook on a medium flame till the pungent smell of chillies mellows down.
6. Now add 1/4th cup of water  to give the mixture a sauce like texture. Cover the lid and cook it about 10-12 minutes until the oil separates from the pan or kadai.
7. After 12 minutes open the lid and stir for a minute.
8. Further add 2 tbsp of Vinegar, 2 tbsp of Sugar, 1/2 tsp of crushed Pepper corns, 2 tbsp of Tomato ketchup, 1 tbsp of Soya sauce and salt as per taste.
9. Give a good mix and let it cook for about 2-3 minutes and you are done.
10. Cool it off and store it an air tight container in a refrigerator.

TIP:

1. Vinegar, Salt and Spices acts as a preserving agent.
2. This sauce should be slowly cooked .
3. This sauce can be stored in refrigerator for 15 days or 1 month. 
4. Use dried kashmiri red chillies since these are less spicy and have great colour
5. Here I have used regular pepper corns, but the original recipes used sichuan peppercorns.