Local Spice Andaliman
I’m craving for some solid Sichuan Ma La Tofu dishes for the past 2-days now. The thing is, it’s hard to get such unique ingredients from where I live.
I ended up Googling various websites for that slim hope that I would not have to buy it hundreds of miles away from here. To my surprise, there are many variants to the plant family. Known as a member of the genus Zanthoxylum, there’s a similar one here in Indonesia.
Called Andaliman (Z. Acanthopodium), its native to North Sumatra, where they used it for preserving food and chilli paste.
First Experience
First tasted it 3 years back, when my sister-in-law came from China for a visit. She cooked a soup-based dish that is red-hot, almost resembling curry, except that it had black seeds all over it. Not used to having seeds in my soups, I foolishly asked what they were doing in the soup. My brother told me, “Just try it.” Without thinking twice, I tried and I could feel numbness everywhere; from the tip to the back of my tongue.
Accurately, wikipedia describes the ma la seeds as,
“…has a unique aroma and flavour that is not hot or pungent like black or white pepper, or chili peppers, but has slight lemony overtones and creates in the mouth a kind of tingly numbness (caused by its 3% of hydroxy-alpha-sanshool) that sets the stage for these hot spices…”
Seeing that all hopes is not lost in the quest for my ma la tofu, I will set out to the nearest supermarket to source out for andaliman. 
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