This Underrated Vegetable Is Packed With Flavour | Garlic Stir-Fried Eggplants

You can grill it, bake it, fry it, yet not much attention is given to this humble vegetable.

I'll be honest, when I think of vegetables eggplants would probably end up near the bottom of the list but that's probably due to me being a picky eater growing up. However, as my tastebuds mature I kinda have a sweet spot for the vegetable and felt like I have a duty to make people eat more of this stuff.

We all know eggplants make up some of the most popular around the world; baba ghanoush in the middle east, ratatouille stew in France, and moussaka in Greece. However, they do not appear as often in the menu as the other vegetables. For the casual home cook they might find the bitter aftertaste a bit hard to swallow or the mushy texture may put some people off but prepared the right way, they can be the star on your dinner table. Eggplants in general doesn't have any overpowering taste so it's easy to sneak them into a dish for the extra nutrients but this also means you can tweak the flavour profile however way you want which makes the eggplant a very versatile vegetable to work with.

In this episode we are going to show you a fairly typical Asian way of preparing the eggplant while maximizing the wonderful flavour an eggplant could provide.

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Ingredients

• 5 eggplants, roughly chopped

• 3 tomatoes, roughly chopped

• 6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

• A handful of curry leaves

• 2 tbsp of oyster sauce

• 1 tsp of chili flakes

• Salt to taste

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Method

1. Deep fry the roughly chopped eggplants until it's nice and soft. You'll know they're done when it gets to a dark brown colour (but be careful not to burn them). Drain the excess oil and set aside.

2. In a pan, stir fry the garlic followed by the curry leaves. Once the leaves starts to pop and crackle toss in the tomatoes and stir fry for about thirty seconds. Season it with some chili flakes, oyster sauce, and salt.

3. Finally, add the fried eggplants into the pan and mix everything well.

4. Plate up and enjoy!