Monday, April 29, 2013

April 26, 2013 Fish and Eggplant in Garlic Sauce

Tonight we wanted to use up some of the odd assortment of unused ingredients left in the fridge.  We had two kinds of cooked fish, halibut and Corvina and a Chinese Eggplant, so we decided to make Suzette’s favorite, Eggplant in Garlic Sauce and add the fish and some vegetables to it.  We started by making 1 cup of rice.  Tonight I added a few dried lily pods and a black wood ears, I had dried from fresh.
The Eggplant and Garlic Sauce recipe (page 169) is in the new Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking Cookbook she had bought me for Christmas last year.  The author, Eileen Yin Fei Lo, cooks with a style that adds fragrance to the food by adding small amounts of rice cooking wine to many recipes, rather than overpowering them with flavorings. 
Eggplant with Garlic Sauce.
You first make the Sauce (This is the recipe from the book but we doubled this recipe because we had two pounds of eggplant and some other ingredients we were adding to the dish.)
1 Tbsp. double dark soy sauce
2 tsp. Oyster Sauce
1 tsp. white rice wine vinegar
½ tsp. Shaoxing wine
½ tsp. pepper flakes from hot oil (we reduce this to avoid making the dish too spicy)
½ tsp. of cornstarch dissolved in 2 Tbsp. of chicken stock
Then I sliced the large Chinese Eggplant into three inch by ½ inch strips (about two pounds) and 1/3 of a medium onion and about ¼ cup of red bell pepper and Suzette sautéed those until tender in 1/4 cup peanut oil as needed.  Suzette stir fried three batches of eggplant strips (the recipe calls for deep frying the eggplant strips in 4 cups of peanut oil, but we never use that much oil), but she used ¼ per batch for a total of ¾ cup for all the eggplant, onion and red bell pepper.
After Suzette had cooked the eggplant, onion and bell pepper, she stir fried the garlic and then added the 1 lb. of cooked fish with one chopped up one baby bok choy.  Then she returned the eggplant mixture to the wok and stir fried it with the meat mixture for a minute and then made a well in the middle of the ingredients and added the sauce and cooked the eggplant mixture for a minute or two while I was stir frying the vegetable dish.
This was a simple dish eaten with a beer.
Bon Appétit

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