Sichuanese Chicken Thighs with an Exotic Sauce

One would expect this dish to be Sichuanese, for the ingredients that make up the sauce call for almost every Chinese condiment in your cupboard. The reward is a range of exotic flavours which assault your tastebuds in sequence, and you are at once surprised and delighted by them.

Dark, rather than white, chicken meat is used because it stands up to the intensity of the sauce so much better.