Instructions: Pour the groundnut oil into a wok and heat until it begins to smoke. Deep-fry the ground pork until it changes color (about 1 minute). Strain off the excess oil.

Combine the chili paste and chicken broth. Add the mushroom soy sauce and the chili paste mixture to the wok and bring to a boil. Simmer for 3 to 4 minutes. Add the bean curd and cook for 3 minutes. Add all of the sauce ingredients, and stir in the scallions.

Place on a serving plate and sprinkle with the Sichuan pepper.

Roast the Sichuan peppercorns over low heat in a dry wok, gently stirring until they become "fragrant" (3 to 4 minutes). Remove and crush them to a "pepper mill" texture (use a coffee or spice grinder), then store them in a screw-top jar.

This recipe yields 6 servings.

Comments: The origin of this famous dish is traced to the Qing dynasty, during the reign of the Emperor Tong Zhi (1864-74). A charming story describes how a peasant woman in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan (Szechwan) province, once provided food and hospitality to the weary emperor. Among the dishes this woman devised and served to her noble guest was a humble dish of bean curd and ground (minced) meat. The womans culinary skill was so highly praised that royal edict pronounced the dish fit for a king and was thereafter to be named in honor of the creator.

In Chinese custom, the woman was mature enough to be simply called "grandmother" and as she was unfortunate enough still to bear the scars of the scourge of smallpox, the dish was rather unkindly called pockmarked grandmothers bean curd. Her fame spread far and wide, and today on the Wanfu Bridge in Chengdu one can still sample the same culinary joys as the Emperor Tong zhi at the original house of "Ma Po."

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