How to make Chinese sweet-sour Eggplants (鱼香茄子 Yu2 Xiang1 Qie2 Zi5)? Traditionally, there is no fish used in this dish, not even fish sauce. The reason for this name is that the fragrant sauce used in this dish is also a popular sauce used to cook fish. SzeChuan style calls for chili bean paste.
Chinese Spicy Eggplants (鱼香茄子)
Servings: 2 people
Ingredients
- 2 Chinese eggplants
- 1 Tomato
- 6 garlic cloves
- 2 green onions
- 1 Egg
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup cornstarch
- 1/2 cup all purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
- 2 teaspoons oyster sauce
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon rice cooking wine
- 1 tablespoon ketchup
- vegetable oil for deep-fry
Instructions
- Make batter: Combine 1/2 cup cornstarch and 1/2 cup all purpose flour in a mixing bowl, crack 1 egg into it and mix well.
- Cut eggplants into thin bite-size pieces and put them into the batter mixture bowl. Mix them well and make sure all the eggplant pieces are coated well. Please make sure the flour mixture is not too thin to drip down from the eggplants, add more flour as needed.
- In a pot, pour in about 5 cm of vegetable oil, bring the oil to 350°F over medium heat. In batches of 6 to 8, place the eggplants in. Deep-fry them for 2-3 minutes or until they’re golden.
- Using a skimmer, remove the eggplants from the oil and place them on a plate lined with a paper towel.
- Cut green onion into 1-inch pieces. Cut tomato into bite-size pieces.
- Heat up a pan with 1 tablespoon vegetable oil on medium high.
- Add green onion and garlic and keep stirring until them fragrant.
- Add fried eggplant, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 tablespoon light soy sauce and 2 tablespoons ketchup, stir fry for 30 seconds.
- Add tomato pieces, 2 teaspoons oyster sauce and 2 teaspoons sugar. Stir fry for 1 minute until all the sauces are coated well.
- Turn off heat and transfer to a plate, Serve!