Who would have thought 8 years ago, or even 3 years ago, that I would have finally mastered cooking Sichuan eggplant (or any type of eggplant) at home? But fresh off my May mastery of Sichuan eggplant, using the Omnivore's Cookbook eggplant preparation approach, I set off to find a better sauce because the last one was too sweet and thick.
A friend recommended the UK Sichuan cooking expert Fuchsia Dunlop's Fish Fragrant eggplant recipe, and I was able to cobble together pantry staples to produce an excellent eggplant dish. The eggplant was spicy, sour, and just slightly sweet from the chile paste, vinegar, sugar, and spice mixture. The green onions added a slight freshness to this dish as well – yum!
I made a few minor substitutions to the recipe – I reduced the sugar to 1 tsp. to avoid too sweet a dish, I substituted corn starch for the potato starch, and I used water + vegetarian Better than Bouillon for the chicken stock. And of course, as mentioned above, I repeated the Omnivore's Cookbook usage of cornstarch to coat and cook the eggplant pieces instead of deep frying them.
After cooking the eggplant, which I did in 3 batches, I then quickly simmered the sauce down before adding in the eggplant. The dish comes together quickly after the eggplant is cooked, so have your rice and other sides ready to eat immediately!
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