September 23, 2012 Dinner - Eggplant, chicken, and turnips with Garlic Sauce

September 23, 2012 Dinner - Eggplant, chicken, and turnips with Garlic Sauce

We are enjoying our garden’s bounty these days.  Tonight while we were watching the low rider symphony and exploring the street fair on Central held in conjunction with the ISEA convention, Suzette mentioned that she wanted to use one of the eggplants from our garden and some of the PPI chicken baked with parsley mousse last Monday to make the Eggplant with Garlic Sauce from “Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking” by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo (page 169).

Sauce

1 Tbsp. double dark soy sauce

2 tsp. oyster sauce

1 tsp. white rice vinegar

½ tsp. pepper flakes from hot chili oil

2 tsp. sugar 

½ tsp. cornstarch

Ingredients

4 cups peanut oil

1 lb. eggplants peeled and sliced lengthwise into ½ wide strips

2 tsp. minced garlic

Suzette made the sauce in a bowl in the kitchen, while I was slicing one Italian rosa eggplant into strips and dicing the chicken.  Willy told us that 2 friends from Vancouver (Joe and Michelle) were coming into town and would arrive around dinner time, so we decided to add additional vegetables from our garden and make 2 cups of white Basmati rice, so Suzette went out and picked 6 small turnips and I picked an about 15 inch long slender Armenian cucumber.

I then sliced the turnips and Suzette stir fried all the vegetables in about ¼ cup of peanut oil to cook them and drained them in a bowl on a paper towel.  While the vegetables were cooking, I peeled and sliced one-half of the cucumber into slices and we put the cucumber slices into a bowl and added 1 ½ Tbsp. rice wine vinegar and 1 Tbsp. Aji Mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine) and a dash of salt and let that sit for a few minutes to begin to pickle it.  

When the rice was done in 30 minutes on low temperature, she removed the oil from the wok and returned the vegetables to the wok and made a well in the middle of the vegetables and added the sauce and cooked it to heat everything.  While she was doing this Willy’s friends arrived and I fetched a 1.5 liter bottle of cold nigori sake from the fridge in the garage and set the table with chop sticks and cups for sake.  After hurried hellos we all sat down to a lovely light meal. 

As we finished dinner, I placed in a bowl the PPI casaba melon cubes soaked in lemon juice we had prepared several days earlier, which made a lovely dessert.  

So this dinner included the following ingredients from our garden: garlic, eggplant, turnips, cucumber, and casaba melon.

Bon Appétit