Air-fried eggplant salad

This super easy, vegan air-fried eggplant salad is an adaptation of my mom's Sri Lankan fried eggplant salad recipe that I love so much. You'd surprise how nicely the flavors match together. The best thing about this dish is that the eggplants are air-fried. Even though deep-frying makes them crispier, for this salad recipe, you don't have to have those extra crispy eggplants. Believe me, I have had this eggplant salad so many times and I hardly notice any difference between deep-fried version and air-fried version. So why consume so much oil when you can make it healthier. We, Sri Lankans, serve this salad with rice and other curries. But if you just want to have the salad then add some greens like lettuce to the salad. But make sure you cut them somewhat small as all the other ingredients in this air-fried eggplant salad are cut into small pieces. If you're not going to have the salad right away, then make sure not to add salt until the last minute. But you can mix all the other ingredients together. And then later add salt when you're ready to serve.   Notes on Air-frying eggplants:

• When you fry eggplants in the air fryer, there are a few things that you need to consider. First, don't cut the eggplants into too thin or too thick pieces. The air fryer is like a mini oven that blows air. If you cut them very thinly, then they're going to blow around when they're frying. Too thick, they're not going to be nice in the salad. The properly fried eggplant pieces should be golden brown on the outside tender in the middle.
• This is very important. Do not overcrowd the air-fryer pan and always arrange eggplant pieces into one layer. Otherwise, they're going to get steamed, not fried.
• You have to add a bit of oil when you fry the eggplant pieces and mix really well to coat each and every piece with oil.
• You can salt the eggplant pieces before you fry them too. But I like to hold back the salt because then it's easier for me to control the amount of salt I add to the salad.
• The air fryer temp can be different from one air-fryer to another depending on the brand. Keep an eye on your eggplants. They go light brown to dark brown very quickly. Also keep in mind, when you fry the eggplants, the first batch takes relatively longer to fry than the seconds batch. So always reduce the time for the second batch.
• use long Asian eggplants if possible. The round one has more meat inside and they don't fry very well and tend to get mushy in the air fryer.

  Serving options: I like to serve this with Sri Lankan yellow rice, Chicken curry, and red lentil curry.