Last year sometime, I went to a homemade calamari feast at my friend Katheryn’s house. (I brought dessert, and also helped disembowel about 300 little squid. My kind of dinner party!) One of her other guests, who was from the Szechuan province of China, concocted a delicious Szechuan spice mix for dipping our calamari: a combination of sugar, salt, black pepper, Chinese 5 spice powder, and hot paprika.
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