Sichuan is the western school of richly flavoured and piquant Chinese food. Every dish in a Chinese meal should include two or more textures: tenderness, crispness, crunchiness, smoothness and softness. In this salad, the chicken is white and tender, the celery is crisp and pale green, the spring onions and coriander leaves are a rich dark green, and a colourful chopped chilli provides heat and flecks of red throughout the salad. The addition of soy sauce, sesame oil and Sichuan pepper, with its distinctive fragrance and curious numbing effect on the tongue, makes this dish unique.