November 19, 2012 Stir fried eggplant and pork with fresh wood ear and shitake mushrooms

November 19, 2012 Stir fried eggplant and pork with fresh wood ear and shitake mushrooms

Last Saturday when we went to Ta Lin, we bought fresh wood ears, which I have never bought fresh before and fresh shitake mushrooms, which are two of the ingredients in Szechwan stir fried pork and eggplant We also bought a Japanese eggplant, with the hope that we could use the eggplants from our garden in the dish.

At 11 a.m. on Monday, I went to our garden and picked one good and one badly frost bitten eggplant and fetched one boneless sirloin pork steak from the freezer.  

Then at 5:45 p.m., after an 18 mile ride and a shower, I started peeling and dicing eggplant.  The combination of garden and Japanese eggplant made about four cups.  I then diced chopped ½ medium onion, 1 Mexican squash and ½ of a poblano chili pepper and added them to the by now rather large bowl of ingredients. 

I then put five or six diced fresh shitake mushrooms and chopped about 1/3 cup of fresh wood ear into a smaller bowl.  Finally, I diced up a quarter sized round piece of fresh ginger root (about 1 Tbsp.) and about 1 ½ Tbsp. of fresh garlic from our garden and the pork steak. 

Then I heated the wok with about 3 Tbsp. of peanut oil and threw in the pork, garlic and ginger and stir fried the meat until it took on a grey color.  Then I scooped the meat out of the wok and added the eggplant and other vegetables, but not the mushrooms.  After the vegetables cooked for about fifteen minutes and softened and took on color, I added the mushrooms and wood ear and stir fried that for about five minutes.  Then I added about 1 ½ cup of chicken stock and the meat back and stir fried that with the addition of 2 Tbsp. of rice cooking wine, 1 Tbsp. of soy sauce and 1 tsp. of sesame oil for an additional ten minutes.

While the mixture was cooking, I put 1 ½ Tbsp. of cornstarch into a bowl and added about 3 or 4 Tbsp. of water and 1 Tbsp. of rice cooking wine, 1 ½ Tbsp. of soy and 1 tsp. of sesame oil.  After another five or ten minutes of cooking, I announced the proximity of the dish being finished and heated some water for tea.  I then added the thickening mixture to the wok.  The hot food thickened immediately, so we had to add additional water until the sauce of the dish returned to a thick gravy like consistency (in this case it seemed like 2 to three cups of water).   This was done by adding water until it liquefied the dish and then turning the food into the sauce until the right consistency of sauce spread uniformly throughout the wok and held its consistency while cooking.  Then Suzette spooned the heated rice into pasta bowls and we each spooned stir fried eggplant over the rice.

The dish was delicious.  Suzette had seconds and when Willy arrived shortly after we began eating he had some and he liked it also.   I drank green tea. 

I loved my first Chinese stir fried dish made with fresh wood ear and the last of our eggplants from the garden.

Bon Appètit