Cut the eggplants into 2 cm widgets. Here is the tip of cutting widgets, cut a triangle area off the eggplant, rotate the eggplants and continue to cut the next wedges. If you are not familiar with this cutting method, simply cut strips.
Add around 1 teaspoon of salt in a large pot of water and then soak the eggplant in the salty water. Absorbing some water can shorten the time of cooking and we can guarantee the eggplants are well cooked in short deep frying process. This also helps to attach the starch in the next step.
Add starch (cornstarch or potato starch) by batches and make sure each piece of the eggplants is well coated by starch. I highly recommend using potato starch for this dish because it gives a lovely white and crispy shell.
When the eggplant is ready, shred ginger, garlic and dried chili peppers. Then cut coriander stem into sections too if using. Then whisk all the ingredients for the bowl sauce together in a small bowl.
Add around 4 tablespoon of oil in wok and shallow fry the eggplant widgets until slightly golden brown. Fry the eggplant widgets for two batches and try to leave some space among each widgets because they may stick together at the very beginning. But if this happens, don't worry. They can be separated after well fried.
Discard extra oil and leave any 1 tablespoon of oil in wok. Fry garlic, ginger, scallion section, dry chili pepper and Sichuan peppercorn over slow fire for 1 minute until aroma. Add the shallow fried eggplants in. Pour in the bowl sauce. Quickly mix well. At last, add coriander stem. Quickly mix again and serve hot!
Notes
This dish must be served immediately after cooked. When it cooled, it taste still good but not crispy at all.