Growing up, I never liked eating eggplant except when fried and partnered with sweet-salty shrimp paste, but over the years I learned how to enjoy it different dishes like Pinakbet, Kare-Kare and Curry.
This recipe is from Dra. Varona and it’s another way to eat eggplant in a healthy and tasty way. She recommends coconut oil in the sautéing and frying and that’s what she used in this dish. Why? Because Coconut oil is very heat-stable and needs a really high temperature before it turns to trans fat making it the healthier alternative.
I love Coconut Oil but the thing is that itl has it’s own sweet and aromatic flavor, affecting the taste of whatever it is you’re cooking.
This recipe is great for Meatless Mondays…
PrintEggplant Szechuan Style
Ingredients
Scale
- ¾ kilo eggplant
- 4 long green onions
- 2 teaspoon hot bean sauce or chilli sauce
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon calamansi extract
- 1 tablespoon water
- 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
- 2 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
- 5 tablespoon coconut oil
- ½ cup water
- 1 teaspoon oriental sesame oil
- 1 ½ teaspoon sugar
- 4 tablespoon sesame seed, roasted- golden brown
Instructions
- Cut eggplant into 2 x ½ inches.
- Separate 1 green onion and cut into thin slices. Reserve for garnish
- Cut remaining onion into thin slices and combine with garlic, ginger and hot bean sauce in bowl. Set aside
- Combine ½ cup water, soy sauce, calamansi extract, and sugar in another bowl. Set aside.
- Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in a skillet over medium-high heat.
- Add half of the eggplants and cook for 5 minutes. Stir until soft and moist. Drain in colander.
- Repeat the two immediate procedures above for the remaining eggplants.
- Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon coconut oil in skillet.
- Add the onion-garlic mixture and stir for 30 seconds.
- Add the soy sauce-sugar mixture.
- Bring to a boil stirring occasionally until liquid has almost evaporated.
- Add diluted cornstarch. Stir until sauce boils and thickens slightly.
- Stir in sesame oil and add sesame seeds.
- Garnish with reserved onion slices.
9 Responses
I dont eat a lot of eggplants but this one I definitely will, I love the flavours in this dish specially the hot aspect of it
Me , too ! But now I love it 😉 Love your recipe , it’s the same ingredients ( or almost ) I usually use when I cook eggplants . I cook mine with minced pork and sans sesame seeds ;D
Eggplant extravaganza…I`m all over this and you better believe it. Thank you:D
Hi Ate Peachy, just wanted to say thanks so much for sharing these Maya Kitchen recipes, for those of us who are also starting the year off on a health kick, this is wonderful! 🙂 I heard about coconut oil being actually an extremely healthy oil not like what we’ve all been led to believe. Also love eggplants myself so will definitely be giving this one a go. It’s yummy when it’s been fried until it’s super-creamy 🙂
I’ve been loving eggplant lately!
I love eggplants. Give me an eggplant in any style of preparation any day! Yumz.
I love eggplant. This looks delicious.
This is one of my favorite way to have eggplants…yours look yum!
Hope you are having a great week 🙂
This looks like a delicious way to prepare eggplant. I love the unique spices, I haven’t seen them paired with eggplant before.