Undergine

Last night Martin cooked a fiery Chinese dish of aubergine (or eggplant if you're American) with chilli-bean paste and habanero pepper. An excellent dish in theory, but marred on this occasion by the fact that the aubergine was undercooked. If there is one vegetable that really needs to be cooked through, it's the aubergine. Raw, it has a horrible cotton-like texture which changes to a lovely melting velvet when it's properly cooked. Of course most aubergine recipes are flexible enough for you to add a few minutes to the cooking time if your vegetable is tough or cut thickly, but as this is a stir-fry, it's not that simple.

However, M has cooked it before and got it right, so as it's such a good dish (and an excellent choice for vegetarians, being quite substantial and "meaty"), I'm including the recipe here. Just cut the vegetable into nice thin strips rather than thick chunks, and keep the wok smoking hot, and you should avoid the underdone aubergine experience.

Hunan Aubergine

A big aubergine or several small ones, 2tb preserved chilli and soy bean paste (from Chinese grocery shops, substitute chilli sauce), 1 tsp dark soy, 2 tsp light soy, 1 tbs rice vinegar (black if you can get it), 1 tsp sugar, oil, Xaoshing wine or dry sherry, an habanero or two, chopped (other chillies will do if you can't find habanero), water.

Combine paste, soy sauces, vinegar and sugar in a small bowl. Leaving the skin on the aubergine, slice lengthways and then across to produce quite thin strips. Heat a wok over high heat, add oil, throw in the aubergine, toss, then add wine or sherry and chilli. Stir-fry for about three minutes or until the eggplant is soft, turn down the heat, add enough water to braise and cover for another minute. Remove cover, stir in the chilli paste, soy and vinegar mixture and heat through for half a minute. Thicken with cornflour if you like (and if it needs it) and serve with plain white rice.