2020-04-28: Fish Fragrant Eggplant

The finished Fish-Fragrant Eggplant

We had some Chinese eggplants in the fridge that needed to be used up. One of my standard recipes for Chinse eggplants is Fish-Fragrant Eggplant, a Chinese dish. On top of that, we had a nice sunny afternoon (we did not have many nice sunny afternoons this April) that allowed me to use our outdoor wok gear to make this dish.

My first step involved cutting 600 grams of eggplants into 2-inch cylinders. And then I cut the cylinders into batons by cutting them into quarters or into sixth's pending on the thickness of the eggplant. Afterwards I put the batons into a bowl, salted them, to draw their liquid out, and set the bowl aside for 30 or more minutes..

A good chunk of cooking with a wok is about preparing everything before-hand. There is typically not enough time, once the actual frying or cooking starts, to prepare additional ingredients. I minced about 1.5 tbsp of garlic cloves, 1 tbsp of ginger, prepared 150 ml of stock or water (I used today water), mixed 0.75 tsp of potato starch with one tbsp of water, prepared 4 tsp of light soy-sauce and 4 tsp of sugar.  I also cut about 6 tbsp of the green parts of green onions into 1-inch long pieces. I only had to fiddle with the chile-bean paste (1.5 tbsp required), because that was my missing ingredient. Instead I mixed up some Korean soy paste with some Korean gochujang (red pepper paste) and somehow tried to approximate, more or rather less successful :-), some sort of Szechuan chile-bean paste. The paste I made worked out in the end, even if it wasn't 100% authentic!

Everything is prepared: Eggplants, pepper paste, minced garlic and ginger, the green onions, the potato starch, and the water.

Then it was time to heat up the canola oil to about 200C or even a little bit higher and fry the eggplants in batches. It is important that the oil is hot, because otherwise the eggplants just soak themselves full with the oil and everything is super-greasy. I fried the eggplant batons until they looked nicely browned/golden. Then I took them out on a paper towel that soaked up the excess oil.

Frying a batch of the eggplants in the wok.

After I was done, I ladled the oil out of the wok and kept only about 1.5 tbsp of the oil in the wok. It started stir-frying the chile-bean paste for a minute or two. Basically you want to smell the frying paste. Afterwards the minced ginger and garlic are added to the paste in the wok and stir-frying continuous for another minute or two until one can nicely smell the garlic and ginger. This is followed by adding 150 ml of stock or water to the wok, plus the sugar and the light soy-sauce. Everything is mixed in the wok and the liquid is heated to a boil (1 minute or so). Then the fried eggplant batons are tipped into wok, everything is mixed again with the spatula, and heated again. By then, the eggplants should have acquired, soaked up, some of the fragrant juices in the wok.

It is important to note, that the frying of the paste, garlic, and ginger does not happen with very high heat. It is more of a gentle (or decent) sizzle. If there is too much heat, the paste will taste burned.

Stir-frying the chile-bean paste and the minced ginger and garlic. Afterwards the stock/water is added as well as the sugar and soy-sauce.

The dish after adding and heating the eggplants.

The final steps are simple: First the potato starch water mixture is added in steps as a thickener of the liquid. Then the green onions pieces are added to the wok and mixed in with a spatula. The final step is the adding of about 1 tbsp of black Chinese vinegar. Again the vinegar is mixed into the dish with the spatula. That is it. The final result can be seen in the very first picture at the begin of the post.

The dish can be eaten hot or cold. It is typically an eye-catching side dish in a larger meal. But also tastes good cold as a quick lunch with some rice.