Yuxiang Qiezi (魚香茄子)
Tonia Sun on her favorite Chinese eggplant dish that she's had on (almost) every continent.
🤷♀️ How is it already the end of January? Perhaps time flies even faster when you’re dry. Looking forward to a slow Feb then.
Favorite Food interviews real people about their favorite food.
My mom tells me my old woman’s penchant for mushy foods is because I was raised by my grandparents.
Art lover, product manager, and owner of a cutie pie dog, Tonia Sun is frequently searching for good Chinese food in Berlin. Naturally, so am I.
We meet at Ming Dynastie, a traditional Chinese restaurant oddly placed in the center of a shopping mall, to test out and chat about one of her all-time favorite foods.
What's your favorite food and what is it?
Yuxiang qiezi, or fish fragrant eggplant (aubergine).
It’s a Sichuan dish made with eggplant that’s either fried or steamed first, then stir-fried together with a garlicky sweet, sour, and spicy sauce.
Why is this your favorite food?
I love the combination of sweet and sour flavors in savory dishes, and the sticky sauce in this dish combines them well, without being as cloying as in other more stereotypical Americanized Chinese fare (think sweet and sour pork or pineapple chicken).
I like to soak my rice in the sauce at the end to get every last bit. The oily eggplant also absorbs the sauce super well, plus I enjoy how soft it is–my mom tells me my old woman’s penchant for mushy foods is because I was raised by my grandparents.
Describe the perfect yuxiang qiezi.
The perfect yuxiang qiezi is drenched in a thick, dark sauce, flecked with bits of pickled chili, pungent garlic, and fermented black bean. The sauce should be spicy and sweet without being too much of either.
I prefer the aubergine with the skin on, usually a glossy iridescent purple to indicate narrow Asian eggplants were used rather than the thicker-skinned western eggplant. Each piece should have soaked up the sauce so that it’s not still white and fleshy in the middle.
And I’m indifferent as to whether it has meat in it–sometimes minced pork is used for added flavor, but I also made a decent version with soy-based “meat” for a recent Friendsgiving.
Any interesting facts about yuxiang qiezi?
The name “fish fragrant” is used not because there’s fish in the sauce, but because the sauce is often paired with fish to bring out the taste of the fish in Sichuan dishes. There’s also yuxiang-style pork or chicken.
What’s one memory you have of yuxiang qiezi?
So many! I’ve sampled it on every continent other than Antarctica (though would like to be perhaps the first person to do so if I ever make it down there).
In university, I went to Peru on a research grant for a paper on Latin American-Chinese relations, and of course, I had to stop by Lima’s Chinatown to try my favorite dish. Chinese-influenced Peruvian cuisine is called chifa, originating from the Chinese laborer population that immigrated to Peru in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, and its most well-known dish is lomo saltado, or stir-fried beef steak.
Their version was good, but not as pungently spicy as the versions in China or the Bay Area where I’m from. I even managed to include a line about the restaurant visit in my final paper write-up.
Where can I get the best yuxiang qiezi?
It would probably have to be in its homeland of China, but Ming Dynastie, Meet You, and Tangs Kantine in Berlin all do decent versions. And somehow I can’t quite ever get the right fried texture at home, so I prefer restaurant versions, though the home version can tide me over til the next time I can have it out.
❤️ Thanks Tonia for yet another fun Chinese food adventure and the new acronym YXQZ.
SO JEALOUS
reading this while eating yxqz.....