When Hannah Che decided during college to go vegan, that meant forgoing most dishes at family meals, as well as her family’s Chinese New Year dumpling-making. “Just eat around the meat,” her mother told her.

So the Portland chef knows firsthand how tricky it can be for vegetarians and vegans to enjoy Chinese food. China’s many cuisines rarely rely on massive portions of meat; instead, animal products are pervasive in small quantities. Even stir-fried green beans or tofu dishes might contain slivers of pork for flavor. 

“It’s impossible to separate who we are from what we eat, and animal products are deeply ingrained in the food traditions of most cultures,” Che writes in The Vegan Chinese Kitchen: Recipes and Modern Stories from a Thousand-Year-Old Tradition, which was released in September 2022 and won a James Beard award earlier this year. “I wondered if my commitment to eat more sustainably meant I was turning away from my culture.” As she delved further into plant-based Chinese cooking, she realized that the heavy emphasis on vegetables meant that many dishes can easily be made vegan. She was the first foreigner to enroll in a rare vegetarian culinary school in China, located in Guangzhou, where she learned to bring out the innate flavors of vegetables and cook mindfully. She then traveled through the provinces of China and spent a year in Taiwan, eating at Buddhist temple restaurants (Buddhist Chinese cooking is vegetarian as well as allium-free) and meeting longtime tofu makers. “I specifically wanted to connect with the vegetarian community in China because I felt like it was kind of their story to tell,” says Che.

The Vegan Chinese Kitchen is a cookbook, yes, but it’s also a family memoir, technique guide, ingredient glossary, collection of artisan profiles, and introduction to the thinking behind plant-based Chinese cooking, which is valuable to anyone seeking an introduction to or fresh take on the country’s culinary traditions. It’s divided into sections based on the type of ingredients featured, from tofu to gluten to leafy greens to beans, fruit, and gourds. This dish highlights one of Che’s favorite ingredients, eggplant, which she braises to enhance its buttery and flavor-absorbing qualities. (Steaming, she says, is also a good strategy.) White rice on the side is mandatory.

We Portlanders can visit her monthly pop-up, Surong. featuring elegant Chinese dishes, many with fermented or locally foraged ingredients. Sign up fast—all of her pop-ups so far have sold out.

Fish-Fragrant Eggplant 
(魚窮한綾 Yúxiāng qiézi)

Serves 4

If you aren’t a fan of eggplant, it’s because you haven’t had this dish yet. Sichuan cooks fry eggplant until it’s golden and buttery, then braise it briefly in a sweet-and-sour sauce. This double cooking transforms the eggplant’s rather chewy, bland, spongy flesh into buttery and tender morsels that melt in the mouth, made irresistibly heady with garlic and enlivened by hot pickled red chiles and ginger. According to legend, the dish originated along the coast of the Yangtze River in Sichuan, where fishermen often cooked the fish they caught using a pungent mixture of chiles, ginger, and garlic. Today the “fish-fragrant” flavor is a standard in the canon of Sichuan cooking, with its distinctive hot, sour, and sweet profile.
—Hannah Che, The Vegan Chinese Kitchen 

For the sauce:

• 1/2 cup unsalted stock of any kind, or water
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Chinkiang black vinegar
• 1/2 tsp potato starch

For the eggplant:

• 1 lb long Chinese or Japanese eggplants (about 3 small)
• Kosher salt
• Vegetable oil, for frying
• 1/2 cup potato starch or cornstarch
• 1 1/2 tbsp Sichuan chile bean paste or pickled chile paste
• 1 tbsp finely chopped garlic
• 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh ginger
• 2 scallions, thinly sliced, white and green parts kept separate

1. In a small bowl, whisk sauce ingredients until blended. Set aside. 
2. Cut eggplants lengthwise into 3-inch sections, then slice into ½-inch wedges. In a large bowl, combine 3 cups water and 1½ tbsp salt and whisk until salt dissolves, then submerge eggplant and soak for 15 minutes. Drain and pat the wedges dry. (Salting helps relax the flesh, reduce any bitterness, and prevent the eggplant from soaking up excessive oil.) 
3. Heat about 1½ cups oil in a wok or skillet over medium-high heat. Coat eggplant lightly in the starch. When the oil reaches 375 degrees, fry eggplant in batches, flipping and turning it occasionally to cook evenly, until edges are slightly golden and skin is glossy purple and wrinkled, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel–lined plate. Pour oil into a heatproof container and reserve for another use, leaving about 1 tbsp oil in the wok. 
4. Return wok to stove over medium heat and add chile bean paste. Stir-fry over low heat until its red oil is released, about 30 seconds. Add garlic, ginger, and scallion whites and stir-fry until just aromatic, about 30 seconds more. Push the aromatics up one side of the wok and pour sauce mixture into the center. Gently fold the fried eggplant into the sauce and simmer about 2 minutes, until eggplant has absorbed the flavors and the liquid is thickened from the starch. Transfer to a plate, garnish with scallion greens, and serve immediately.