Making use of more of our garden’s bounty: Chinese Eggplant with Garlic Sauce

Regional variations of Chinese Eggplant with Garlic Sauce are a mainstay on countless Chinese restaurant menus. Here’s how to make it at home. Recipe below.

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]I[/su_dropcap] have recently written—twice, mind you—about our prolific Romano bean plants. Our single eggplant, er, plant is giving the beans a run for their money, producing endless long, slender Asian eggplants and challenging us to find new ways to prepare them. Instead, I’ve opted for an old way, a classic Chinese dish.

Anytime we eat in a Chinese restaurant, which is quite often, one thing we always look for is eggplant. No matter the regional cuisine, it’s likely they do something wonderful with eggplant. One of our favorites is Chinese Eggplant with Garlic Sauce. This classic Chinese dish should be part of every vegetable lover’s repository. It is traditionally served with rice, but you don’t need that. It’s very satisfying on its own, or as part of a larger meal.

There are countless variations on this recipe, some more ornate than the version we’re sharing here, even including ground pork or ground shrimp. There are simpler versions too. Restaurant versions tend to be saucier and more oily than the dish you see here. And while we’re always delighted to eat the various restaurant versions, for cooking at home this has become our go-to recipe.

There are a number of Asian ingredients in this recipe, but they are easy to find—most are available in larger mainstream supermarkets. Don’t be put off by the fish sauce—it adds necessary umami and isn’t at all fishy in the finished dish.

Chinese Eggplant with Garlic Sauce
Serves 4 as a side

For the sauce:
1-1/2 tablespoons spicy bean paste
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 cup shaoxing wine or dry sherry
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons fish sauce (see Kitchen Notes)

For the eggplant:
canola oil
Asian eggplant, the long slender kind cut into small, equal sized pieces—five to six cups
4 or 5 big cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
2 to 3 teaspoons fresh ginger, peeled and minced
3/4 cup of scallions, cut into one-inch pieces and divided into white and green parts, or 1/3 cup of chives, cut into 1-inch pieces (see Kitchen Notes)
4 or 5 fresh jalapeños, cut into small sections (see Kitchen Notes)

Make the sauce. Mix all these ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

Make the eggplant. Heat 2 to 3 tablespoons oil in a heavy bottomed skillet over medium-high flame until it is fairly hot—you don’t want it so hot that it starts to smoke and burn. Add half the eggplant and sear it on two sides. Keep an eye on it—this will taste much better if you let it sear and get a nice golden browny look, but be careful not to burn it. Remove the first batch to a bowl as it cooks, then add more oil and cook the second batch. If you need to divide the eggplant into three batches, so be it.

Add more oil and lower the heat to medium-low. You may want to wait a minute so the pan cools a little. Add the ginger and the peppers, stir-fry for about a minute, then add the garlic and stir-fry again for about 90 seconds.

Next, add in the eggplant, the sauce, and the white part of scallions, or, alternatively, half the chives. Mix everything together well, lower the heat a bit, and cook for another couple of minutes. The eggplant should become soft and cooked through (it may take a bit longer to achieve this depending on the thickness of the eggplant pieces).

When the eggplant has cooked through, add the scallion greens or rest of the chives or, stir again, and you are ready to serve.

Kitchen Notes

Scallions? Chives? Scallions are the traditional ingredient for this dish. But we didn’t have any, and we do have plenty of chives out back.

The jalapeños. Those are not jalapeño peppers in the picture. I don’t know what they are. I used a mystery pepper that just appeared in our garden. I have no idea what it is and had been freaking out over it a bit; this weekend, I decided to get over myself and give it a try. It looks fiery, but it is totally mild. For those without access to completely mysterious random peppers, I recommend substituting jalapeños—remove the seeds if you are concerned about heat. If you want to up the heat, use dried tien tsin peppers. For a more American flavor, use a bell pepper, cut up in little squares.

Which fish sauce should I choose? There are lots of kinds out there and lots of them are delicious. Choose one that comes in a glass bottle rather than plastic and you will be ahead from the start.