This recipe for spicy stir-fried amaranth, a hearty, sustaining green with a flavor similar to spinach, gets a triple dose of heat from dried Thai chiles, chile powder, and pleasantly numbing Szechuan peppercorns. If you can’t find amaranth, the recipe also works with a variety of different kinds of leafy greens, including chrysanthemum greens or spinach. If substituting other greens, aim to have roughly the same volume of greens, not the same weight. (And yes, 22 cups might seem like a lot, but it cooks down almost immediately.) If you are using spinach, remove the stems and only cook the leaves. If you are using other greens, taste them toward the end of cooking and add more salt or chiles if needed. Cutting the amaranth leaves crosswise and briefly covering the wok while cooking them breaks down the fibrous leaves and gives them a pleasantly soft, chewy texture.
Szechuan peppercorn is a citrusy-tasting spice that creates a tingly, numbing sensation in the mouth and can be found in Asian grocery stores. Find Szechuan peppercorns at flybyjing.com and Big Green Food dried chile powder at amazon.com. For a more moderate amount of spiciness, omit the chile powder and Szechuan peppercorns and use only the whole dried chiles, which can be removed before serving.