Cooking with Colm O'Gorman: Szechuan chicken and aubergine

I have a beautiful Chinese dish for you this week, perfect for a weekend treat. This recipe is a definite crowd pleaser. It is a lovely mix of a little spicy and a little sweet with beautiful layers of flavour.

Szechuan pepper is the key ingredient in this recipe. This lovely pink spice is actually not a peppercorn at all, instead it is the dried husk of the seeds of a shrub that comes from the citrus family. It produces a lovely tingly, spicy, slightly bitter citrus flavour that works beautifully with chilli. When making this dish do not increase the amount of Szechuan pepper to make it hotter, that will not work. Some of the molecules contained in Szechuan pepper have a numbing effect, hence the tingling sensation, and if you use more the numbness will be too much and overpower the dish. Instead add more chilli flakes if you want more heat.