31:08
Hi guys, welcome back to School of Wok YouTube channel. This is Lance from School of Wok and brilliant chef Ian. Also from the School of Wok. What a lovely introduction. Thank you, Lance. And today, what are we making? Oh, it's my dish. Uh, so today Lance, Yeah? what are we making? Today we're making sweet and sour crispy aubergine. Teaser, come back later in the video to find out why we double fry aubergine.
Yeah. Where do we start? We start with quartering the aubergine lengthwise. Mhm. Then we scoop the core bit out and then we're going to cut it at an angle into a nice, how do I say it? Is it a diamond shape, would you say? Uh, yeah. A wonky diamond shape. Yeah, yeah. Lance, answer this question. Why do you chefs love cutting things on an angle like this? It's a classic School of Wok joke. Yeah. We cut it at a at an angle just that we can charge more, okay? Charge an extra £2 for it in your restaurant. And what are you doing with the water here, Lance? So, we're going to soak the aubergine in the water Mhm.
cuz we're still going to cut some other ingredients. Yeah. So, in the water, it's going to stop it from getting dark. And also, to keep its natural purple color. Mhm. There's a small ramekin there with the white rice vinegar. If you don't mind, just pour them in. Add it to the water. No problem. Yeah. That will keep the color nice and purple. Just make sure. So, man, just leave it. We're going to start chopping.
Okay. So, we've got garlic, spring onions, Mhm. of dry chilies, Mhm. not soaked. We want to reach that nicely, kind of like a burnt chili flavor Yes. into it. Yeah. Until it's nicely dark and crunchy. We've got two types of Sichuan peppercorn here. Got the red one and the green one. I would say red peppercorn is more of a low No, rich. Yes. No, low notes. Yeah. which comes after. But the green one sharp, fresh sharp. Yeah. I think sharp's perfect word for it.
Yeah. So now we're going to start chopping. Ian, would you mind just breaking these dry chilies and remove the seeds for me? Remove the seeds. Break it into the into chunks. Yeah, I'll do that for you. So this isn't going to be a super spicy dish which is more peppery. More like sweet and sour. For the spicy just a bit of background to enhance the flavor. Got you. Some deseeded chili there for you.
Thank you, Ian. Garlic, I'm not just I'm not smashing it. I'm just going to lightly crush it to loosen the skin, peel it, and slice it into Beautiful. slices. Magic. What comes next, Lan? Next, we're going to coat the aubergine Okay. with some corn starch. If you don't mind putting in the flour cuz I got my hands wet. So I intentionally didn't dry it Yeah. cuz we want the flour to coat on. Yes. So you want to go a bit by bit? Do a bit first and then I'm going to toss well and then do the next bit. bit more. Okay. You say when.
Yeah. So you want a thin layer of flour on the surface. Have you ever played mahjong? Never. This is the motion. When you're shuffling. Not encouraging gambling, though. Maybe I'll do a bit more water. Yeah. And a bit more flour. You want the all the corn flour to coat the aubergine slices and you need a bit of water to let it cling to the surface. In this instance, we're not permeating. We're just clinging. What's permeating, Don't worry, not for this video. Now we're just waiting for the oil to get hot. What temperature are you looking for Lance?
We're looking for a wooden chopstick bubbling temperature. Just about 170 Celsius. We wouldn't know where that was. 2,000 years later. We're going to deep fry twice Ian. The first one to test the temperature. Either without a probe you are able to test it. Put your aubergine finger when it's nicely gently bubbling like this. About 170 Nice. Celsius. We're going to fry them twice. Lance, for God's sake tell the people why we're double frying. First time just to cook the whole thing and while it's got taken out from the hot oil, it's going to keep steaming and
all the water is going to be pushing to the surface of your ingredients in there. And which makes the surface get soggy again. Which is not what we're looking for if we deep frying. If we deep fry, we always want it crispy. Absolutely. So we're going to after a few minutes, when it cools down, we're going to heat up the oil until a really hot temperature and then we're going to put the fried aubergine back in for like 20 seconds to get it really crispy on the surface and nice on the color. Looking for a slightly darker color. Mhm. And you can actually feel it. It's quite Yeah, and you can hear it.
Yeah. Like when you put it in it was really bubbly. Yeah. And actually the bubbles calm down as Yeah. That's also one of the signs. I think aubergine is one of these things for me that people don't like because they've been served very bad Yeah. aubergine and actually like one of the best ways to cook aubergine is to deep fry it. And also another way I like is the charred Mhm. roasted aubergine char the skin on the outside nice. Yeah. I think that's ready. Cool. Okay. Would you mind doing the second batch for me while I'm mixing the sauce?
I can do that. Just make sure they don't stack together. Otherwise they get too soggy. Okay. I'm going to mix some sauce here in. Yeah. First thing, sweet and sour of course. Three tablespoons of sugar. And also we've got some about two tablespoons of black rice vinegar with one tablespoon of the white rice vinegar. To mix with the sugar. And why are you using both? And again, I'm going to steal your line again. It's a low and a high. Yes, exactly. That's quite an important thing with Chinese cooking is that's where the kind of complexity comes from with things that you're getting not it's not one type of sweet,
it's not one type of sour. And also we've got some light soy and a bit of oyster sauce for the savoriness. This sweet and sour sauce is quite different from the one you might be more familiar with which is the red color looking one. That's the one we put in um ketchup. That's more of a Cantonese style of sweet and sour. But this one's more like northern China, Shandong province is where we're from. I would say it's less sweet cuz you didn't put in the ketchup and it's more of just it's enhancing the sharpness from the vinegar. Yep. Yeah. I think the craziest thing I've ever seen you do Lance is when you deep fried that whole crispy pork belly.
Oh. In the wok in the middle and it was like everywhere and you were just like whack a little Hold on tight. Okay. whack up the heat. Yep. And whack in the aubergines. Whack and whack. Okay, sweet. Okay. Half and half for the second fry. You don't want to overcrowd your wok. If you wet the whole thing in, it's going to cool down straight away. And your aubergine gets greasy and not crispy. You want to do it half and half. You do this half and you heat up the oil and do the second half. And you're stirring a lot more this time.
Yeah, cuz I don't want it to get too much color, get burnt basically. Yeah. And you want the color to be even. Yes. Now we're going to walk around the wok clock. A little bit of your oil, the aubergine. Okay, so what are we starting with Lance? The chilies and the Szechuan pepper, yeah? Yeah. Off the heat for a bit so it can infuse nicely and not burning. Yep. It was at this moment he knew. That's all burnt. That's how you are and you just have to say you're fine and you're not really fine. Just can't get into it cuz they
would never understand. So we're going to fry the aromatics in a bit of the oil. With a bit of oil. On a medium heat. Starting with our peppercorns and our chili in. And then come away. Spring onion and garlic. Yeah. You kind of want those chilies to just catch a little bit and like toast and Yeah. char. You happy or a little bit longer on the heat? Happy. Okay. Sauce goes in. We just want it to thicken, right? Yeah. So ideally, I want to put it put in the aubergine when it's sticky enough, but the heat's off. So you don't want to heat it up in the wok, otherwise they will get soggy.
So I'm just tossing it. Yeah, I think it's ready. Yeah. Heat off? Heat off. Do you want to scoop a ladle sauce? Yeah. And I whack it in and you pour it on top. And I will toss and toss together. Nice. Okay. And sesame seeds. Spring onions and coriander. Do you want all of these, Lance? Or Maybe not. Spring onion as well? And serve it up. Serve up. Okay, are you ready, Ian? I am indeed, Lance. Let's try. Please. You have this bit here. Just no one talking. It's It's so crisp.
It's incredible. And like there's no there's absolutely no like bitter flavor from the aubergine. Mhm. And you're right, there's just enough What I love about this dish is there's just enough of that heat from the peppercorns and the chili. That's incredible. That's the best sweet and sour I've ever tasted in my life, Lance. I'm going to say it. And you can taste um different vinegar. I think like obviously there's a part of me that really loves the kind of classic Cantonese style sweet and sour, but this is a little bit more I'm going to use the word elegant.
Refined. Classy, Lance. That's what you bring to the school of what? Okay, thank you for your amazing wok skills, Ian. Thanks, Lance. Okay, this is our sweet and sour crispy aubergine. In Mandarin, we call it feng wei qie zi. So, Lance, I think it's only right that we eat We ask people if they've enjoyed the video to give us a like, subscribe, leave a comment down below with uh maybe your favorite aubergine dish or something you want to see us make in future. Uh or just hi. Yeah. Hello. Goodbye.
