April 3, 2013 Lunch – Taj Mahal, Dinner – Chinese Eggplant with Garlic

April 3, 2013 Lunch – Taj Mahal, Dinner – Chinese Eggplant with Garlic

A couple of old favorites today.  Amy came to town to transfer the title of her 2007 Prius to me and we met Willy for lunch at Taj Mahal.  Everything was delicious, as always.  I got my usual favorites; Saag (greens with cilantro and chili), tandoori chicken, meatballs, riata, a bit of dhal (today it was chick pea), a few pieces of squash and a piece of Naan.   Amy and Willy and Luke love Taj Mahal, because it has very flavorful vegetarian food.  I am omnivorous. We never get tired of its food.

I was going to go to meditate but before leaving helped Suzette cook rice and prep the Chinese Eggplant with garlic dish she likes to make, since she had found an eggplant in the vegetable crisper and some PPI chicken.  

I chopped about 2 Tbsps. of garlic and greens I had pulled from the garden yesterday and then sliced the eggplant into long square strips like French fried potatoes and then sliced two large white mushrooms (Costco).

The Eggplant and Garlic Sauce recipe (page 169) is from the new Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking Cookbook.  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:

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

Suzette sautéed the eggplant slices until tender in heated peanut oil (the recipe calls for deep frying the eggplant strips in 4 cups of peanut oil, but Suzette mixed canola and peanut oil and used about ¼ cup of that oil).  After Suzette cooked the eggplant, she stir fried the garlic and then the mushrooms in more oil and then added the chicken. 

Then she returned the eggplant slices to the wok and stir fried them with the vegetable and meat mixture for a minute and made a well in the middle of the ingredients and added the sauce and cooked the eggplant mixture for a minute or two and the dish was ready.

 

I went outside to go to meditate and realized that Willy had taken the little truck with my cushions so I could not meditate.  So I went back inside and ate dinner with Suzette.  Talk about living in the moment.

Bon Appétit.