Pickled Eggplant (油漬茄子)

As my last post suggested, I am into bread making lately.  I am not a jam person, nor do i like Nutella, peanut butter, etc.   However, I love sandwiches, cold cut platters, cheeses, etc.  Immediately, I thought of a recipe book I got from the Hong Kong Book Fair last year and made one of the recipes - Pickled Eggplant.

This book is written by Ms. Kotera Miya.  Throughout the year, I have tried a number of recipes off this book and I must say I have thoroughly enjoyed everything!  All the recipes are so simple!  If you read Chinese / Japanese, I strongly recommend this book to you.   (You can get it from Eslite or online.)

The pickled eggplant went extremely well with the French bread.  I made a small batch last night and I ate the whole thing today already.  Not wanting to waste the olive oil, I bought more eggplants today for a second batch!  I am not gonna go into all the details but I will share my tweaks to the original recipe.

1. Sliced some eggplants and soak them in salted water until it is soft.  I would cut them thicker next time.  It's too thing this time in my opinion.

2. Hand-squeeze the eggplants to get rid of the moisture.

3. Line them on an oven rack or pan fried them on a non-stick pan till light golden brown.  I didn't add any more oil when frying them since they will be soaked in oil later on!

4. In a mason jar, de-seed a few fresh/dry chilis, sliced a few cloves of garlic, add a teaspoon of unsalted Italian seasoning or your favorite (fresh/dry) herb.

5. Line the jar with #3 and top with extra virgin olive oil.

6. Store overnight.  Bon appetite!