Spicery kidney beans

In college, I did my study abroad semester in Beijing, China at Peking University. My favorite dish the whole time I was there was also the first dish I had in China, at a place just outside the South Gate of campus called the Nine-Headed Bird. They had a menu with English-translation available for foreign students, although it was evident that a native-speaker did the translating. This dish, listed as "Spicery kidney beans", consists of Chinese string beans and Sichuan spices. One of the first things I did when I arrived back in the States was to visit a Chinese grocery and purchase the two spices I could recognize from this dish - dried red peppers and "Sichuan dried pepper". I admit that there is something still missing from this recipe that I cannot quite recall, but it will do until I somehow make it back there.

We used American-style string beans because we'd picked some up in our CSA-share this week and enjoyed long-grain brown rice with the meal.