Chinese Eggplant Side Dish - 蒜茄子

We are told to eat more colourful food all the time, so today I am going to show you a side dish made with the purple vegetable, the eggplants, called 蒜茄子, meaning garlic marinated eggplant. It’s a very traditional side dish from the north eastern part of China, which is where I am from, and I grew up eating this stuff. I hated eggplant as a child, but I loved 蒜茄子. The eggplant is salty and is infused with a mild garlic taste, but the garlic looses its bite from the marinate. Let’s go make it.  

The ingredients are very simple, it’s just eggplant, garlic and salt.

The ideal eggplant to use are these long and thin Chinese eggplants.  But it’s not readily available to me, so I will be using the round and chubby kind. 

The first thing we want to do is to get rid tip part that’s connected to the stem since the fiber is too hard to eat. Then let’s cut the eggplant down in size. I am going to cut it in half, then again in quarters, and once more, until it’s about 1 inch in thickness. I am also going to cut it in half lengthwise so it fit my pot. 

Place everything in a steamer, I am going to use my rice cooker, and we are going to steam it for about 15 minutes.  If you steam it for too long, it will be soft and mushy, if steamed too short, it wouldn’t be cooked enough.

While we wait for the eggplant to steam, let’s chop some garlic. You will need about 8 large garlic gloves. The easiest way to peel garlic is to smash it down really hard, and the skin just separate by itself. 

We want to finely mince the garlic, so a food processor will help, or just run your knife through it back and forth, then place it into a bow. 

We are going to add one table spoon of salt. Mix it well with the garlic. You can adjust the amount of salt to taste.

After 15 minutes, take the eggplants out of the steamer and allow it to cool to room temperature. Handle it gentally because it’s very soft

Once it’s cooled, take the eggplant and rip it open in the middle, and spread a generous amount of the salt and garlic mixture in the middle. I find hands work the best. Close up the eggplant, and do the same to all the rest. Compared to just rubbing the marinate on the surface, more of the salty garlic flavor will be infused into the eggplant by stuffing it in the middle. If you run out of the garlic and salt mixture, you can always chop up some more.

Once all the eggplants are stuffed, cover it with plastic wrap and leave it in the fridge for at least a day.

To serve, tear up the eggplant into threads. you can sprinkle on some green onion and sesame seeds for texture and flavor. Since it’s a side dish, you eat it along with rice and other dishes.  Or it’s great to eat with congee all by itself.

I hope you will give it a try, I will post more Chinese recipes soon~