Aubergine is one of my favourite vegetables to cook, especially in Chinese dishes, I think I first came across fish flavoured aubergine (yu xiang qiezi) when I lived in Kunming, Yunnan province after uni and this dish has a similar profile, removing the minced pork but keeping the garlic, ginger and chilli.

I decided to add tofu to this dish to make it into a more substantial main course, it goes well with just some simple plain rice.

Serves 2

Time 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 aubergine, slice into batons

• 280g block of firm tofu, cut in to bitesize cubes

• 2 cloves garlic, diced

• 1 small thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and finely diced

• 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely diced

• 1 tbsp chilli bean paste

• 1 tbsp oyster sauce

• 1 spring onion, sliced

• 1 small handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped

• 2 tsp cornflour

• 2 tbsp vegetable oil

Sauce

• 2 tsp Chinese black rice vinegar

• 1 tsp sugar

• 1 tsp soy sauce

• ¼ tsp salt

• 200ml chicken stock

• 2 tsp toasted sesame oil

Method

1. Whilst prepping all the ingredients, I like to semi cook the aubergine via steaming for about 15 minutes as I find frying the aubergine from raw takes longer but also aubergine soaks up a lot of oil whilst frying. Steaming first means it uses less oil to cook the aubergine through. If you don’t have a steamer, you can skip this step and you’ll just need to fry the aubergine a few minutes longer and with a little more oil.  

2. Mix all the sauce ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.

3. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a wok or frying pan and fry the aubergine until it is almost cooked through and has gained a nice golden colour on the outside. Remove from the wok and set aside.

4. Add another tablespoon of oil and fry the chilli, garlic and ginger along with the cubed tofu. Toss a few times so that the tofu is fried on a few sides and starts to colour.

5. After a few minutes add the chilli bean paste and oyster sauce along with the aubergine and toss.

6. Turn down the heat and then add the sauce and stir once again leaving to simmer for a few minutes. The aubergine should be cooked through by now.

7. Mix the cornflour with a couple of tablespoons of water so there are no lumps then add this in to the pan and mix (don’t put the cornflour straight in to the pan without mixing with water first as you’ll find you get cornflour lumps).  

8. The sauce in the pan will thicken, in fact you may need to add a little water to loosen it up again.

9. Stir in the chopped coriander and half the spring onions then plate up with a little extra of both for garnish.

10. Top off with a light drizzle of toasted sesame oil and serve with some rice.