NEVER Fry Your Eggplant Again! Try These Old Chinese Tricks Instead

You put a pan of oil on the stove and lay in the eggplant, and within seconds the oil is gone. You pour in more and that disappears too. The eggplant comes out dark, limp and heavy, and nobody takes a second piece. You didn't cook badly. You were asked to fry a sponge. I'm Mei Lin, and I grew up in Guangzhou, in the south of China, in the 1960s. In summer, eggplant was the cheapest vegetable in the market, and my mother cooked it for six children three or four nights a week. Oil was expensive and rationed, so she never once fried eggplant in half a bottle of it. These are her ten tricks for soft, silky eggplant, golden at the edges and full of flavour, made with a tiny fraction of the oil. In this video: • How to choose a young, heavy eggplant with your hand, and the truth about "male" and "female" eggplants • The Chinese rolling cut, and why it cooks more evenly and holds more sauce • Why fifteen minutes in salted water with a splash of vinegar stops eggplant soaking up oil • Squeezing out the water before it goes near any heat • Steaming it first, the Cantonese way, with no oil at all and no steamer needed • A light dusting of cornstarch for golden edges and a creamy inside • A very hot wok with one or two tablespoons of oil, skin side down to keep the purple colour • Getting the sauce ready before you light the stove • Fish-fragrant eggplant, and why there's no fish in it • My mother's simplest trick: steaming the eggplant on top of the rice • Whether modern eggplant still needs soaking • A week of meals from one plate of eggplant No deep fryer, no special equipment and no half a bottle of oil. All you need is a bowl of water, a pot with a lid, and a little patience, the way my mother cooked it in Guangzhou. How did your family cook eggplant? Fried, stuffed, in a stew, or something only your family made? Tell me about the woman who cooked it. Where was she from, and what did her kitchen smell like on a summer night? Tell me in the comments. I want to hear it before it is gone.