Eggplant in Garlic Sauce

Brandt, do you remember our first sort-of date?  We had dinner together at PF Chang’s,way back when before we even went to with Brian to visit Steph, and we didn’t know if it was a date or not? More importantly, we both really enjoyed the eggplant dish.   So, tonight I made my version of that dish, and it turned out really well.  It’s your pretty common Chinese restaurant eggplant, carmalized a little bit in sweet spicy sauce.  It would be good with tofu too.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures,so you’ll just have to use your imagination for the visuals.

Ingredients: Several japanese eggplant (the long skinny ones) or 1 large regular eggplant. Oil, garlic, ginger, chinese 5 spice, red pepper flakes, soy sauce, oyster sauce, and sugar.  Rice, and optional firm tofu.

Start the rice steaming.  If you want tofu, fry it first.  I have discovered that if you press it dry on paper towels and then toss the tofu chunks in a little bit of cornstarch to coat the outside, and then fry them in a little bit of hot oil, they will brown up nicely like at chinese restaurants. Or if you are lazy, you can always just saute until them plain, they still taste good without the pretty browning. Set cooked tofu aside.

Chop up the eggplants into big chunks. No need to peel. Add a big splash of oil to the wok (or large pan) and get it hot.  Eggplant soaks up oil, so you need more than you’d expect. You can always add another splash if they get dry, too.  Fry the eggplant on pretty high heat for about 5 minutes, with lots of stirring so they don’t burn, but they get brown and soft. Add either a couple cloves of chopped up garlic and a chunk of ginger, or give an seriously generous shake of each if you are using powdered spices.  A smaller shake of the 5-spice, if you have it, if not, just add a little bit of black pepper. Add as many shakes of red pepper flakes as you are in the mood for.  Taste and ass more if you need. If you have cornstarch, add a Tablespoon (T) of that, and about a 1/2 cup of water, to make it more sauce-y. If not, it’ll just have less sauce to flavor your rice.  Add 2 T soy sauce and 1 T oyster sauce and 1 T sugar. Stir everything up, and keep cooking it on high heat until the eggplant is really soft and a little caramelized looking. Toss in the tofu, if you are having it, and serve with rice. It’s not as good as the eggplant at the Chinese restaurant next-door to my Grandma’s retirement community in Pennsylvania, but it might be just as good, or maybe even better, than PF’s. Enjoy!