Recipe: Eggplant Katsu

Today we will prepare a Japanese dish named Katsu. When I first prepared it, I thought it was an Indian dish because of all the special flavours, but I guess I was wrong then. This Katsu takes a little bit more time to make but the results are absolutely delicious and I can guarantee that EVERYONE will love it. The original Katsu is mostly made with fried chicken, but as I am a vegetarian I replaced the chicken with eggplant. I got this recipe from the amazing duo from Bosh TV, they make delicious vegetarian/ vegan meals that not only look good to the eye but taste good too. Go check out their website or their Instagram for more inspiration.

For this dish we need a bunch of ingredients. I will start of with the ones needed to make the Katsu sauce:

- 1 big onion 
- 1 small carrot 
- 5 cm of ginger 
- 2 cloves of garlic 
- 2 tablespoons of roasted sesame oil 
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil 
- 1/2 teaspoon of soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon of curry powder
- 350 ml of vegetable broth 
- 1 lemon 
- 2 teaspoons of Garam Masala
- 1 teaspoon of sugar
- 1 tablespoon of cornflour 
- 2 tablespoons of water 

To make the fried eggplant we will need:

- 175 grams of flour
- 1/2 tablespoon of salt 
- 250 ml of milk 
- 150 grams of bread crumbs
- 2 eggplants 
- 4 spring onions
- sesame seeds
- 500 grams of basmati rice

Now lets get cooking !! We will start by making the sauce:

1. Peel and cut the onion

2. Peel and grate the carrot

3. Peel en cut the ginger and garlic

4. Heat the sesame oil on a medium heat

5. Fry the onion for 3- 4 minutes

6. Add the carrot and olive oil and stir for 5-6 minutes

7. Add the garlic and ginger and stir for 2 minutes

8. Add the soy sauce and curry powder and stir again for 2 minutes

9. Put all of it in a mixer or use a kitchen blender, together with the vegetable broth

10. Put the sauce back into the pan once everything is smooth

11. Cut the lemon in 2 en squeeze the juice out of 1 half into the sauce

12. Add the Garam Masala en sugar and then turn the heat to low

13. In a separate bowl; mix the cornflour with water

14. Add the mixture into the sauce and stir until the sauce thickens

While keeping the sauce on a low heat, we are going to prepare the eggplant. This asks for some effort but the result is super yummy!

1. Put the flour, salt and milk into a mixing bowl and make a batter

2. Put the bread crumbs into a separate bowl

3. Slice the eggplants into slices of about 1 cm

4. Put olive oil into a pan until it is about 2 cm deep

5. Heat the oil on a medium heat and put a wooden spoon over the pan

6. Once the edges of the oil start bubbling, we are ready to fry the eggplant

7. Dip the slices into the batter and immediately roll it into the bread crumbs (As you can see on the picture it is best to but all 3 steps next to each other to create less mess)

8. Put the slices into the frying pan and fry on both sides for about 3-4 minutes

9. Take the sliced out of the pan and put them on some kitchen paper to get rid of the grease

10. Whilst frying the eggplant, start cooking the basmati rice

Now for the fun part; decorating the plates:

1. Divide the rice over your plates

2. Put 3-4 slices of the fried eggplant on top of it

3. Sprinkle it with the Katsu sauce

4. Then add some sliced spring onion on top and if you like you can add some sesame seeds too.

As you can see it is a pretty extensive recipe, but it is not hard to make at all, what makes it even more fun to try it out. I like to cook together with someone else which is very convenient for this recipe as one person can focus on making the sauce while the other person (me) is whipping their arm of by making the batter 😂. Know that the amount of eggplant is a little much, in our case we weren't able to finish all slices so next time we will probably cut the slices a bit thicker.

Enjoy and don't forget to share your recreations with me by tagging me @lapetitebelgefoodblog or adding the hashtag #Lapetitebelgefoodblog!

A bientôt!

Bisous