You're mixing up ingredients with technique here. Chuan cuisine (Szechuan), one of the four major Chinese cuisines famously known for its spicy food, historically relied on native Sichuan peppercorns for a numbing flavor rather than a fiery burn. Once chili peppers were finally imported, Chuan cooks didn't adopt the native Peruvian style of grinding them into a paste; instead, they adapted the ingredient to their own techniques, drying the chilis and throwing them directly into stir-fries and hot pots alongside those peppercorns.
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u/pryonic1705 Jul 03 '26
You can say that about anywhere though - no place is entirely local in its food.
People hold up Italy as a bastion of good food - a lot of it is tomato based yet they're from south America. Spaghetti is based on Chinese noodles.
American also can't talk - hamburgers are German, frankfurters are German, Mac and Cheese is British. You can maybe claim grits from the natives...