Sichuan · Main
Yuxiang Qiezi
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, real fire that builds and stays, with a lingering ferment tang.
Ingredients
- 600 g Chinese aubergine, cut in batons 8 cm by 2 cm
- 5 g salt, for drawing
- 400 ml rapeseed oil, for frying
- 40 g pao la jiao (brine pickled Sichuan chillies), chopped fine
- 20 g Pixian doubanjiang, chopped
- 25 g garlic, minced
- 20 g ginger, minced
- 40 g spring onion, white and green, sliced fine
- 20 g caster sugar
- 20 ml Baoning vinegar
- 10 ml light soy sauce
- 6 g potato starch
- 60 ml water
- 2 g salt, for the sauce
Equipment
Wok
The skills inside
Wok techniqueBrining & curingDraining fried food: a rack, never paperSalting to draw the water outKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · soy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Salt the aubergine and leave 15 minutes, then blot dry; the salt collapses the sponge so it drinks far less oil. 15 min
- Whisk sugar, vinegar, soy, the second salt, starch and water into one sauce and stand it beside the wok. Yuxiang is mixed before it is cooked, never corrected in the pan.
- Fry the aubergine at 180C (355F) for about 2 minutes, until the skin blisters and the flesh goes translucent and slumps; drain on a rack, not paper, so it stays loose. 2 min
- Pour off all but 30 ml of oil, add pao la jiao and doubanjiang over medium low heat and fry about 2 minutes, until the fat turns clear orange red and the sourness turns fragrant; add ginger and garlic for 20 seconds. 2 min
- Return the aubergine, stir the sauce to lift the settled starch, pour it round the rim of the wok and toss 30 seconds until it goes glossy and clings in a thin coat; kill the heat and fold in the spring onion.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Wok technique 28 recipes
- Everything went in dry and went in in order. Wet protein or wet vegetables drop the wok below the heat that browns, and what follows is a stew in a round pan however hard the burner is working.
- The wok stays loud from the first moment to the last. A wok that falls quiet has been overloaded, and the food in it is now boiling in its own liquid.
- Every piece is coated and glossy with no pooled sauce in the bottom of the dish: the sauce should cling by reduction and starch, not sit under the food.
- Vegetables keep their colour and a bite at the centre. Grey-green greens or a limp stem mean too long in the pan, and nothing later in the dish recovers them.
- It carries the faint scorched note that only comes from food touching metal above about 200C, distinct from bitterness, which means the aromatics were burnt and is a different failure entirely.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, or it went in wet. The wok loses its heat, the food releases water and simmers, the sauce thins instead of clinging, and the dish arrives pale and slack with liquid pooling under it.
Salting to draw the water out 41 recipes
- Salted evenly over every surface rather than tipped on in one place and tossed once.
- Laid out so the water has somewhere to go: a colander, a rack, or a sieve over a bowl, never a flat dish where it sits back in what it gave up.
- Given real time, and there is visible liquid to show for it: a pool underneath, a drip, or a wrung handful.
- That liquid is removed. It is squeezed, blotted or poured away, and the food is dry to the touch before it goes anywhere near heat.
- The dish is seasoned knowing salt has already gone on, tasted before any more is added.
Where it goes wrong It went into the dish still wet, and was salted again out of habit. The water it was carrying dilutes and steams whatever it meets, so the result is watery and over-seasoned at once, and those are two faults that cannot be corrected in the same direction.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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