“I love the eggplant dish at Monster so much I find excuses to visit Canberra. May I have the recipe?”
Sue Ward, Croydon, NSW
REQUEST A RECIPE
To request a recipe, email [email protected] or send us a message via Facebook. Please include the restaurant’s name and address, as well as your name and address. Please note that because of the volume of requests we receive, we can only publish a selection in the magazine.
Ingredients
Soy marinade
Method
Main
1.Cut eggplant lengthways into 2.5cm-thick wedges, sprinkle with salt and stand in a colander for 10-15 minutes.
2.Meanwhile, for soy marinade, stir ingredients in a small saucepan over medium-high heat just until sugar dissolves (2-3 minutes). Set aside.
3.Rinse salt from eggplant and pat dry with paper towels. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat, add 60ml vegetable oil and shallow-fry eggplant in batches until golden-brown on both sides and tender (6-8 minutes), adding oil as necessary. Transfer eggplant to a bowl, pour soy marinade over and marinate at room temperature (1 hour).
4.To serve, drain eggplant from marinade and arrange on a serving platter, dot the goat’s curd around. Scatter with sesame seeds, radish, nori sheets and shiso leaves and serve topped with the katsuobushi.
Note Nori sheets and katsuobushi, or dried bonito flakes, and are available at Asian supermarkets. Monster’s chefs smoke their goat’s curd but here we’ve gone with plain goat’s curd instead.
Notes