I've cooked up a few things from her books in the past couple of weeks: beef with cumin, numbing & hot chicken, red-braised bean curd puffs, Yueyang velveted fish, steamed eggplants with chile sauce, and pork slivers with sweet bean paste... it's definitely been an adventure. The smoke detector has gone off twice and the Sichuan peppercorns I lovingly ground up in my mortar for the numbing & hot chicken I cooked tonight BURNED MY HANDS FOR TWO FULL HOURS.
I guess I did read Fuchsia's warning about wearing rubber gloves, and I guess I'm lucky I didn't rub my eyes or anything like that, but seriously, it was like someone had pepper-sprayed me in the hands. It started out as if my hands were clammy, with less circulation than usual, but things quickly escalated. For a couple of hours, my hands felt intensely tingly and fiery to the point of being simultaneously icy cold.I needed relief and I needed it fast -- so who did I turn to? The Internet, of course. There, I saw recommendations for things ranging from dishwashing liquid (no effect), to oil (no effect), to bleach (no thanks!), until finally I saw something about how rubbing alcohol dissolves the capsaicin on the outside of your skin but as for the stuff that managed to make contact with your nerves (??!?), you have no choice but to nut up and walk it off. Luckily, Eli realized that hand sanitizer is pretty much the same stuff as rubbing alcohol so the problem was contained, if not completely rectified for another couple of hours. And I think it goes without saying that the deeply visceral nerd-feeling I get from cooking with rubber gloves will be a small price to pay the next time around.
