So, it's a rare and happy treat whenever a chef from China's Sichuan province comes to town, especially when his bags are packed with peppers, pickled vegetables, bean pastes and star anise. That's the case with Lee Wei, who's smoking tea duck, kneading dan-dan noodles and serving twice-cooked lamb at the Inter-Continental Hotel's Summer Palace through July 16.

When reached in his hometown of Suilin, Lee was busy tucking packs of prickly ash in his suitcase for his trip to Bangkok. Prickly ash, also known as Sichuan pepper, is the woody, citrusy spice that numbs your lips and tongue when you crunch down on the dried florets. It's the dried red chillies - not the prickly ash - that lend Sichuan dishes their heat. In Sichuan, dried chillies are often sizzled in oil to impart their scorched, hot flavour associated with kung pao chicken. Milder chillies are pickled with brine and spices to create the base for the "fish-fragrant" flavour, a mix of sweet, sour, salty and spicy elements. Chilli and bean paste are used for "home-style" dishes. Ground chillies and chilli oils make the "strange flavour" concoctions that have sweet, salty, numbing, hot, sour and, sometimes, nutty tastes.

There are 23 complex flavours in Sichuan cookery - including "hot-and-numbing", "tangerine peel" and "hot-and-sour" - and there are 56 specific methods to cook the cuisine. Most are known only to chefs, such as Lee, 38, who apprenticed to his father, master chef Li Cheng Heng, for a decade at leading hotels in China and abroad.

"The main ingredients are the same wherever I cook them," Lee says in Chinese with a deep, rich voice, much like his region's food. "True Sichuan flavour is fine for Thailand and India, but I have to tone the flavours down for Hong Kong, which is accustomed to Cantonese cuisine."

For Thai diners, he recommends some classics: Mo Po bean curd, smoked tea duck, braised sliced beef with chilli sauce and twice-cooked pork. Pock-marked grandmother Chen's tofu, or Mo Po bean curd, is named after its creator and known for its rich, warming, tingling qualities, as well as the bright red of the chilli-bean paste and ground chillies, the green flecks of leek.

Tea duck is marinated and smoked over a mixture of bay leaves, tea and sugar. The result is juicy and aromatic. Twice-cooked pork is boiled till its tender then wok-fried with sweet-bean paste, fermented black beans and garlic greens or Chinese leeks.

Sichuan province is nearly as large as Thailand, so it has numerous regional distinctions. Chengdu is the culinary capital and home of the province's milder, more complex dishes such as Mo Po tofu. Chongqing is one of China's hottest cities, has the province's spiciest food and is known for its chilli-laden hotpot. Ya'an, a tea centre on a tributary of the Min River, is celebrated for using young tea leaves during harvest to create subtly-flavoured, aromatic dishes.

Lee says he's bringing the full Sichuan flavour spectrum to Bangkok. But he's not making the dishes as spicy or as oily he would in Sichuan. "Ask for true Sichuan," he says, "and it'll burn your tongue."

Lee Wei will be cooking a special menu of Sichuan dishes through July 16 at the Summer Palace in the Inter-Continental Bangkok (BTS: Chidlom). Call (02) 656 0360.

Hal Lipper,

Jing Cai

The Nation