Chinese Eggplant Salad Recipe

Eggplant is just one of the most popular greens applied in chilly Chinese dishes identified as liangcai (涼菜). Its light sweetness and smooth texture operates incredibly well with a selection of flavors, from garlic and bright herbs to nutty sesame pastes. This model offers the eggplant with a dressing primarily based on my “all-purpose” Chinese-design vinaigrette, but presented a spicy taste with the addition of some chili oil. I also insert minced garlic and scallion greens for brightness and herbaceousness.

The simple all-goal vinaigrette is one thing I arrived up with soon after pondering if it could be feasible to build a Chinese-vinaigrette rule-of-thumb related to the Western 3:1 ratio of oil to vinegar in dressings. Soon after researching numerous chilly dish recipes, I landed on a ratio of 3:3:1:1 by volume of soy sauce to aromatic oil to vinegar to sugar, respectively. This isn’t an complete rule you can experience in all of Chinese cooking, but it really is a practical framework for building dressings that are adaptable and well balanced. It’s also a wonderful jumping-off level for variants, these kinds of as my addition of chili oil below in area of aspect of the fragrant oil in my simple vinaigrette recipe.

The finest eggplants for this salad are the extensive, slender Chinese eggplants. Come across ones that are business, with vivid, darker purple on the exterior and brilliantly white within. Mainly because Chinese eggplant generally has fewer seeds than globe eggplant, it tends to be sweeter. Chinese eggplant is also extra resistant to dissolving into mush when cooked completely, and it retains a pleasantly stringy texture. To defend its purple colour, the eggplant is soaked briefly in white vinegar, which causes the anthocyanin in the pores and skin to appear extra lively.

I like serving this dish on the facet of a relatives-type meal, in particular if the main programs are heavier and warm. Even though this salad is served cold, it would not shy absent from layers of taste and can stand on its personal when eaten with flavorful stir-fries and braised meats. The dressing is also delicious around white rice.