Aubergine Hotpot and Smoked Chilli Sauce
Ingredients
For The Smoked Chilli Sauce:
· A pack of green chillis
· Vinegar (to taste)
· ½ tsp Sugar
· ½ tsp Salt
· A generous splash of vegetable oil
· Shisha charcoal and an open flame gas hob (optional)
The Main dish:
· 500g veal mince (can substitute with pork, chicken or turkey mince)
· 3 large aubergines, chop into large batons
· 3 tbsp Crushed ginger
· 3 tbsp Crushed garlic
· ½ Lemon
· 50g Butter
· 1 tsp Cornflour
· 50ml Cold Water
For the braising liquid:
· 2 tbsp Soy sauce
· 300ml Vegetable stock (low salt)
· 4 tbsp Fish sauce
· 1 tbsp Oyster sauce (optional)
· 1 tbsp Rice wine vinegar
· 4 tbsp Mirin
· 1 tsp Sugar
For the garnish:
· A few tablespoons of sesame seeds
· Handful of fresh coriander
Serve with enough rice for 4 people
Method to Make the Smoked Chilli Sauce
Top, tail and deseed the chillis. Chop into pieces about 1 cm. Fry in generous quantity of hot vegetable oil till the skin starts to blister.
To smoke, make a small bowl out of foil, just big enough for a shisha charcoal. Remove chillies from the heat. Get the shisha charcoal lit and extremely hot, ideally on a gas flame. Put the lit charcoal into the foil bowl in the middle of the chillies, and pour a splash of vegetable oil onto it and cover immediately. This should produce a lot of vegetable oil smoke and give the chillies a beautiful smoky flavour. Leave for about 10-15 minutes.
Lift out the oil and pop them into a bowl or mortar. Once cooled a bit, give them a little mash with a fork or pestle to get some juice out. Now add salt, sugar and vinegar a little bit at a time (about half a teaspoon of salt/sugar, and then add vinegar to taste). Mix and leave it for about 30 minutes, give it a taste, and then adjust the salt/sugar/vinegar balance according to taste. Set aside for serving.
Prepare The Garnish
Take a few tablespoons of sesame seeds and drop into a dry pan.
Cook over medium heat, tossing regularly to avoid them burning. Once they start to pop, remove from the heat, continue to toss them a little and set them aside. Expect them to jump out of the pan when they pop, you might want to put a lid on.
They should smell like toasted sesame seeds. If you smell burning, chuck them and try again.
Chop the fresh coriander coarsely. Set both the sesame seeds and coriander aside for serving.
Prepare The Braising Liquid
Mix 300ml of veg stock with: 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 4 tablespoons fish sauce, 1 tablespoon oyster sauce, 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar, 4 tablespoons mirin and 1 teaspoon of sugar.
We're making a braising liquid, so there needs to be enough to cover the aubergines, and not a lot more. Once it's all mixed, set it aside
Cooking the Main Dish
Fry the aubergines until they start to get a little brown. Use more oil than you think. If they are particularly wet or there are too many in the pan they won't brown. This isn't a big problem, but only fry them for 3-4 mins or they'll overcook.
At the same time, fry about 3 tablespoons crushed ginger and 3 tablespoons crushed garlic in oil for about a minute, then add the veal mince and fry till there isn't any more pink on the veal.
Then add a ladle of the braising liquid to the veal, ginger and garlic mix and continue to cook over medium heat. Pour the rest of the braising liquid over the aubergines and continue cooking the aubergines over low-medium heat. After about 5-6 minutes the aubergines should be soft but not disintegrated, and the veal should have reduced down quite a bit.
Drain the braising liquid from the aubergines directly into the veal - we're now going to reduce it down until it has the amount of sauce we like.
Set the aubergines aside, they will be added towards the end.
Once you've got nice oil separation on top of the veal mince and there's a nice sauce underneath (I like to cook it down so there's quite a thick, sticky, flavourful sauce, but you could always go runnier), mix 1 teaspoon of cornflour with about 50ml of cold water and mix in, lowering the heat at the same time. This should thicken the sauce right up. Then take it off the heat and stir in the juice of about half a lemon and about 50g of butter.
Serve with rice, smoked chilli sauce and garnish with the coriander and sesame seeds you prepared earlier.
Made by Jonathan, Cooking Competition Winner 2024
