MUZIChinese Matrix
Sichuan Cuisine · FFET10236
Fried eggplant is tossed in a sauce of pickled chili, ginger, garlic, sugar and vinegar; the flavor is sour, sweet and spicy, and the dish holds no fish.
A round white porcelain plate has purple eggplant coated in glossy red-brown sauce with minced pork, red pickled pepper bits, pale garlic, minced ginger and green scallion, with wooden chopsticks resting beside the plate.
The regional cooking of Sichuan and Chongqing, known for its wide range of flavour types.
Fish-fragrant eggplant is fried eggplant tossed in a sauce of pickled chili or bean paste, ginger, garlic and scallion with sugar, vinegar and soy sauce, and the dish contains no fish. Fish-fragrant is a Sichuan flavor that comes from a folk way of seasoning fish and takes its name from a pickled chili called yu la zi. A Hong Kong version adds salted fish. No dated record of the dish or the flavor was found.
Fish-fragrant eggplant is fried or pan-cooked eggplant tossed with a sauce of pickled chili or bean paste, ginger, garlic and scallion plus sugar, vinegar and soy sauce, thickened until glossy. The dish contains no fish.1,3,4
The fish-fragrant flavor originated in Sichuan, and its sauce is representative of Sichuan flavors. Hong Kong has a version with salted fish: early Hong Kong cooks knew the name but not the method, assumed fish was needed and added salted fish.1,2,3,4
The eggplant is fried, often after a coating of starch. Pickled chili or bean paste is fried with ginger, garlic and scallion, then sugar, vinegar, soy sauce and water or stock go in and the sauce is thickened with starch. Both recipes add ground pork.3,4
The name describes a flavor, not an ingredient: savory, sour, sweet and spicy together. The flavor comes from a way of seasoning fish. Two explanations of the name remain unsettled; the claim that older menus used characters meaning 'lingering fragrance,' later changed to the fish-fragrant spelling by sound, has no cited source.1,2,3,4,5
Fish-fragrant eggplant is a representative dish of the fish-fragrant flavor.1
Legend has it that a home cook poured the sauce left over from braising fish onto eggplant, and the result tasted so much like the fish dish that it was called fish-fragrant eggplant. The tale is retold in a signed recipe, and no historical document that records it was found.
Told in: Retold in a signed recipe as an explanation of the dish name. No old book that records the story was found.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
There is no fish in this dish; fish-fragrant is a flavor. This is my home version, and the amounts follow a signed recipe. The other recipe is also signed; it uses dried chilies, wine, oyster sauce, sesame oil and stock in the sauce, and I did not follow it. The soaking and the frying heat are my own choices at home.
Allergens: soy, wheat
