Szechuan Garden Restaurant, St Leonards, NSW

Szechuan-style dishes come primarily from two cities in Szechuan province, ChengDu and KunMing. The dishes are basically for family dinner, neither too fancy nor exotic. There is a wide spectrum of tastes in Szechuan cooking, including bitter, hot, sour, salty and spicy. Often two or more of these flavors are combined in one dish, creating s new and unique flavor. Some of the original Szechuan flavor such as Yu Xiang, a mixture of twelve spices and condiments; Gong Bao, hot pepper with several condiments; Shuan La, a more “Hot and Sour” taste, and so on. Dried stir-frying, classic stir-frying, braised, stewed, and steamed are the range of cooking method. Although a lot of oil is used in preparing many of the dishes, the result is not an oily taste. It’s certain that you would like Szechuan-style as it’s one of the most popular of Chinese cooking style. About Hunan Dishes: Hunan Province is an agricultural area with the most fertile land in all of china. The people have an abundant supply of fresh and healthy food products. As Hunan is a country province, people demand quantity and quality in their dishes before beauty. Thus the Hunan style is a hearty style characterized by string flavors, for example hot, salty, smoked, and peppery. Because of these pungent flavors, Hunan dishes are often served with rice to enhance the taste. Steaming, braising, stir-frying and smoking are the common methods of cooking. Smoking meats is quite popular, because it serves as a method of preparation as well as a cooking method. While all of these dishes are quite delicious it has only been recently than Hunan-style becoming well know and popular. Hunan-style dishes, because of their simplicity and rich flavor, seems to agree with the varied tastes of most people no matter where they from.