Chinese eggplant in starch

Step-by-step cooking

1. Step 1:

   

   In any Asian dish, it is very important to prepare everything in advance, because then the cooking process itself takes very little time and during this period it is simply impossible to prepare all the ingredients in the proper form in such a short time. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare all the vegetables. First you need to wash the eggplants and cut them into rather large pieces. Salt them to get rid of excess moisture in them.

2. Step 2:

   

   Then put the chopped eggplants in a deep container, add potato starch (5 tablespoons) and roll them in it. This is necessary so that eggplants emit less moisture when frying and absorb less oil.

3. Step 3:

   

   Now you can peel the garlic (3 cloves) and chop it finely with a knife.

4. Step 4:

   

   Peel the bell pepper, cut into large pieces. It is better to use peppers of different colors: one is red, the other is yellow. This way the dish will look even more beautiful (I have two red ones, since there was simply no other one in the store). Peel the chili pepper from the seeds (if you prefer it sharper, then you can not extract the seeds) and cut into small triangles. Peel the onion, cut in half, cut each half lengthwise and across once.

5. Step 5:

   

   Also chop the green onion coarsely and set it aside, since it will be useful only when serving the dish itself, it will not be subjected to heat treatment.

7. Step 6:

   

   Now you need to prepare a sweet and sour sauce. To do this, you need to take a small container, pour soy sauce into it, in which you need to dissolve granulated sugar. Then pour in rice vinegar, a little vegetable oil, add garlic (1 clove), crushed through a garlic press. In a separate container, dilute a tablespoon of starch in water. This liquid will be needed at the end of eggplant preparation for controlled thickening.

8. Step 7:

   

   Pour a large amount of vegetable oil into the pan, heat it up, then put the eggplants in the pan and deep fry them for 5 minutes. Then take them out and flip them into a colander to drain excess oil.

9. Step 8:

   

   Put the garlic crushed earlier in the same pan and fry it for 20 seconds. Then add the rest of the vegetables to the garlic and fry everything a little more, 3-4 minutes so that they remain still crispy.

10. Step 9:

    

    Then return the eggplants to the skoroda to the rest of the ingredients, pour in the sweet and sour sauce, add a spoonful of tomato paste and thicken it all with starch liquid to your liking. If necessary, add a little salt to the dish, mix all the ingredients again, then remove the pan from the heat.

11. Step 10:

    

    Put eggplants with vegetables in sweet and sour sauce on a dish, decorate with chopped green onions and sesame seeds.