This is what we called in Chinese as 鱼香茄子。However my version is only mildly spicy as one of my child has lower tolerance for spicy food. Nevertheless, it is still very tasty and just perfect with a bowl of piping hot rice. My niece who is an exchange student and have been staying with me since the circuit breaker loves this dish so much. The fact that she doesn’t like eggplant, she requested me to cook it again where I happily granted her wish. I told her that I will blog this one so she can cook it when she gets back to her home country :). This is the main reason of my blogging, that is to share my recipe to the people I love and to other food lovers like me. With my blogging, my children can easily follow and whip up the dish themselves with only minimal supervision from me. There are instances that I would find it too troublesome to blog, needing to measure every single thing when most of the time I would just put in ingredients based on estimation. However, if I get acknowledgement from people that they have tried the recipe and appreciate my sharing, that keeps me going. Anyway here is the recipe, enjoy 🙂

Ingredients

• 600g sliced eggplant (logged shape, refer to picture below)
• 300g minced meat
• 20g minced shallot
• 15g minced garlic
• 1 chopped long red chili (with seeds)
• 4 pcs chopped birds eye chili ( small red chili)

Garnish

• 1 stalk of chopped spring onion (only the green part)

Sauce /gravy

• 3/4 cup water
• 2.5 tbs light soy sauce
• 2 tsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tsp rice vinegar
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tbs oyster sauce
• 1 tsp potato starch

Note : feel free to add more chilis if you like it more spicy.

Method

• Mix all the sauce in a bowl and set it aside
• In a heated wok at medium high heat, drizzle enough oil to deep fry the eggplant. Ensure that the oil is hot enough before putting in the eggplant. Test the oil by the using a wooden chopsticks. Bubbles around your chopsticks signifies that the oil is ready. Fry the eggplant in 2 batches. Fry until the eggplant softens. Strain the eggplant (see note below)
• Remove the excess oil, and leave only about 3 tablespoon of oil in the wok, add in the chilis, shallots and garlic. Stir fry for a minute at medium heat.
• Add in the minced meat, stir fry and break up the meat into small bits. Stir fry until all meat are brown and cooked.
• Add in the sauce, stir and lower down the heat and let it simmer until it slightly thickens, this will only take less than a minute. Turn off the heat. Add in the eggplant and stir well to combine. Serve and garnish with some chopped spring onion

Note : If you do not want to fry, you can also use boiling method. Just like my other recipe https://decadentandsavoury.com/2019/05/10/eggplant-with-minced-beef/. Add in only the eggplant on a rapid boiling water, and use a heavy bowl to push down the eggplant. It is important that all eggplant are submerge to prevent oxidation thus losing the purplish colour.

Another method would be steaming. Add in the eggplant into the steamer only when the water is rapid boiling. These two method are the healthier option however, I noticed the fried one’s texture is better (口感）。I leave it up to your preference 🙂