One-Hour Vegan: Toban Djan (Doubanjiang) Aubergine
A richly flavoured aubergine-centric meal that takes one hour to cook. Words and photos by Samuel Rawat-Fisher.
Good morning, and welcome to Vittles! Today, Samuel Rawat-Fisher shares recipes for an aubergine-centric vegan feast with fragrant coconut rice and a refreshing cucumber salad that only takes an hour to cook from start to finish.
A reminder that we will stop taking pre-orders for Issue 1 of our print magazine tomorrow morning. After that, orders will close for two weeks, and we will start sending out magazines from the week of 5 May 5 (apologies that this is a few days later than originally expected).
There are also still some tickets left for our panel at this year’s British Library Food Season dedicated to the question ‘What is the point of a cookbook?, featuring Ozoz Sokoh, Rukmini Iyer, Sophie Wyburd, and Ruby Tandoh. The event will take place at the British Library on 28 April at 7pm. Tickets are £10 and you can buy them here.
One-Hour Vegan: Toban Djan (Doubanjiang) Aubergine
A richly flavoured aubergine-centric meal that takes one hour to cook. Words and photos by Samuel Rawat-Fisher.
I love to make this aubergine dish – at the restaurant when I’m cheffing, for parties, and especially at home for my wife. It’s a particularly well-thumbed page in my little recipe book. I can’t fully remember when or how I came up with the dish, but it was probably the result of an attempt to get rid of some of the half-empty jars that I had accumulated in the fridge – in this case toban djan (doubanjiang), a Sichuan paste of fermented soybeans and salted chillies that has a deliciously thick, dense flavour profile.
While developing the recipe, I experimented with various vegetables. Butternut squash was resolutely impervious to absorbing the sauce in the way I was looking for, and courgettes fell apart entirely, losing any distinct flavour. Aubergine is unquestionably the one: it becomes deeply infused with the flavours as it cooks and goes wonderfully soft. After the aubergine has taken on the toban djan flavour, I cook it down in passata so that it becomes more of a stew. I also add fennel seeds, which bring a hint of aniseed sweetness to cut through some of the heat from the fermented paste.
I serve it with a simple coconut rice infused with lemongrass, ginger, and lime, which add a subtle fragrance that contrasts beautifully with the deep spiciness of the aubergine. I also tend to do a little smacked cucumber salad as a side – it’s really quick and easy, and is nice and refreshing if the aubergine gets too hot. All three dishes can be ready and on the table within an hour.
Timings
I know that sometimes it can be daunting to figure out how to time everything accurately when you’re making a meal that has multiple components, especially when your time is limited. To make things easier, I’ve compiled a table, using 6pm as the starting time, in which the one-hour preparation and cooking time is segmented into slots so you’ll know exactly what you should be doing at any given time.
Toban Djan Aubergine
Serves 2 (with leftovers)
Time 1 hr
