On 2010-07-02, isw > wrote:
> With the ones I have, many of the red "shells" contain hard, black,
> nearly flavorless seeds (or whatever), that I can't believe add anything
> to the final dish.

I suspect you may have somthing other than true szechuan peppers.

I just partially crushed some szechuan peppers (not a true pepper) I
bought from a little Chinese import store, which they had just
received from mainland China. No little black seeds. I dug out my
loupes and magnifiers and saw something that looked like a REALLY
SMALL black seed, about the size of the POINT of a pin, but further
scrutiny revealed them to be merely parts of the interior meat of the
pepper. Beside, even this near microscopic particle had enough flavor
to discern as being szechuan pepperish.

You may have one of the bogus szechuan pepper substitutes which were sold as szechuan
peppers back when they were banned from importation into the US,
something grown in Hawaii, as I vaguely recall.

nb