Wok fired eggplant

This is a spicy dish that I unfortunately made inferno-hot. The recipe comes from Grace Young's book, The Breath of a Wok, which is beautiful if you ever are interested in stir-frying.

Basically it's steamed eggplant that is then stir fried with some chili and a basic stir fry sauce. I cut it in half as a main dish for one person, but forgot to cut the amount of chili in half. Fuego!

Eggplant x 2

Apparently eggplant is in season, and thus cheap and delicious. I like the long chinese eggplants, which generally have lighter skin and a more sweet flavor. Here are two things I did with eggplants in one night.

The first thing to keep in mind with eggplant is to cook it slowly. You can't grill/fry/saute it normally, because it's just too dense and watery. Imagine grilling a cucumber. Soggy mess, right?

I like roasting. Easy, no mess, and you can do lots with it. 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes and you're done. Roast longer for a softer, mellower flavor.


The first dish is stir fried eggplant with tofu. Follow the basic stir fry mantra: garlic/ginger, meat, veggies, sauce. The sauce is pretty basic stir fry (oyster, soy, wine, vinegar, corn starch, stock), but this should be sweeter and spicier than normal, so add sugar and chili.


As a side dish I made some sookjoo namul (korean bean sprout salad).



The second dish was baba ganoush, which used the other two eggplants. All it takes is tahini, olive oil, garlic, parsley and lemon juice. Mince the peeled eggplant into all the other stuff and season. Makes a good dipping sauce for snacking. (Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of this)