Fried rice with minced meat with hoisin sauce and Szechuan pepper

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 1 clove(s) garlic
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp peanut oil
• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 400 g minced beef or mixed
• Sichuan pepper
• 1 onion(s), diced
• 2 carrots, cut into half slices
• 1 stalk(s) leek, cut into half rings
• 150 g rice
• Sesame oil, roasted

Instructions

Working time approx. 10 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 20 minutes; Total time approx. 30 minutes

Crush the garlic in salt in a mortar and pestle. Heat the oil in a wok (a large frying pan or pot will also work) over medium heat, add the garlic paste. Be careful that the oil isn’t too hot, as it will splatter a lot. Lightly sauté the garlic, then quickly add both sauces. Stir everything together, increase the heat, add the ground meat, stir, and fry. Add Szechuan pepper (amount to taste). Add the vegetables and cook until tender, but don’t let them get too tender. Meanwhile, cook the rice according to the instructions and then stir it into the meat and vegetable mixture. Season with more soy sauce to taste. Add a few drops of toasted sesame oil to flavor the dish. We also call this dish the “crunchy stir-fry.” The first time I made it, I thought the crunch when I chewed it was because I hadn’t washed the leeks properly. After cooking it several times, however, we realized it was the Sichuan peppercorn. This is the dried seed pods of the yellowwood tree and thus not really pepper, but rather a citrus-related pepper. It’s available commercially in both ground and unground versions. The unground pods can be put in a mill or crushed in a mortar. In a pinch, it can be substituted with black pepper, but in my opinion, this would lack an important flavor component of this dish.