Di San Xian
Potato, aubergine and green pepper each fried separately then brought together in a garlicky sauce. Dongbei, and the name means the three treasures of the earth.
Photograph credit: 지삼선 by Paularis · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Fry the three vegetables separately and in that order. They cook at completely different rates — potato needs several minutes, aubergine drinks oil and collapses, pepper wants barely a minute — and thrown in together you get raw potato with disintegrated aubergine. Salting the aubergine first and pressing it dry also cuts the amount of oil it absorbs by roughly half, which is the difference between this dish being good and being greasy.
Quick Answers
How long does Di San Xian take to make?
20 minutes of preparation and 20 minutes of cooking, plus 20 minutes of salting, so allow 1 hour from start to finish. The recipe serves 4.
Di San Xian: Step by Step
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Toss the aubergine chunks with the salt and leave 20 minutes, then rinse and press them dry between cloths.
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Heat the oil in a wok to 180°C / 355°F.
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Fry the potato chunks 5 minutes, until golden and cooked through. Lift out onto a rack.
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Fry the aubergine 4 minutes, until browned and collapsing. Lift out.
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Fry the pepper 45 seconds only, until blistered but still crisp. Lift out.
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Pour off all but 2 tbsp of the oil and fry the garlic 20 seconds.
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Add both soy sauces, the wine, sugar, salt and water and bring to a simmer.
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Stir in the slaked cornflour, then return all three vegetables and toss until coated.
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Finish with the sesame oil and spring onions.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Worth Getting Right
- Fry them separately: potato, aubergine, pepper, in that order.
- Salt and press the aubergine or it drinks twice the oil.
- Pepper for forty-five seconds only.
Swaps and Variations
- Out of spring onions? A small regular onion, finely sliced, or a few chives stirred in at the end both cover the job.
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
Serve It With
Steamed rice · A cold beer · Vinegar cabbage
Leftovers and Storage
Refrigerated for 2 days, though the vegetables soften. Do not freeze.
Di San Xian Nutrition
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (how much frying oil the food takes up cannot be known from the recipe). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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