Eggplant with Tofu - Chinese

This year I planted eggplant in my small vegetable patch. It amazingly survived 3 super hot summer weeks without water and produced a decent number of fruit. Not enough for our normal consumption but enough to enjoy.
I also had a cabbage plant that did not do well at all. It grew tall and flowered. The blooms were really pretty so I just let it be. Turns out that the seeds from the cabbage dropped all over my vegetable patch and late in the summer I had literally hundreds of tiny cabbage plants. I had to thin them out because there was no way that any would survive at that density.
So there I was with a couple of eggplants and heaps of very young green cabbage and dinner to cook! I figured I'd try and put them together Chinese style because I also happened to have a pack of tofu in the fridge.

Served over udon noodles

The resulting experiment was very well received, which led to me having to jump up from the dinning table and grab a pen and paper before I forgot what I had put in to it. It took me a while to revisit the recipe, but that is exactly what I did last night. I didn't have any homegrown produce so I thought it might not taste as good. This didn't seem to be a problem. My teenager stuffed her face and could not keep saying how good the food was! This is not the normal reaction I get these days. Normally I get "oh, not that AGAIN!". So I figured I better post this recipe before I loose my notes!

Preparation time: 1.5 hours ; serves 8 (together with a couple other dishes) 

Ingredients:

800 g	Eggplant
1 bunch	Any type of greens (mustard, leafy green cabbage, etc.)
1 pack	Firm tofu
8 tbsp.	Oil
1 tbsp.	Minced garlic
1 tbsp.	Minced ginger
Sauce
1 1/2 tsp.	Bulion powder or 1 veggie cube
250 ml	Water
4 tsp.	Soya sauce
1 tbsp.	Hoisin sauce
1/2	Lemon, juice of
1 tbsp.	honey (substitute maple syrup if vegan)
1 tsp.	Sirachara sauce

Method:
First of all let me say that the amount of eggplant and greens that you use is not that precise. I used 2 eggplants and I am pretty sure they were much smaller the first time around. If you eat a large amount of tofu you could use 2 packs instead of one. And I really can't tell you what a "bunch" is!! Chopped up I had a cereal bowl full (how big is your cereal bowl?). Sorry that I forgot to weigh the greens :(

Start by cutting the tofu into this slices about 5 mm thick. Lay the slices out on a paper towel, cover with a second paper towel and leave them to allow the water to be absorbed. While your tofu is drying cut the eggplant into 1 cm dice (fancy way to say 1 cm cubes) and wash and roughly chop your greens. You can really use any greens that you like. First time around I used a bowl full of young cabbage plants, the second time around I just picked up some nice looking green stuff from the local Turkish store. I don't even know what they were, but they looked mighty like kale. It might be a good idea to try greens that won't loose too much water when you cook them.

Heat 2 tablespoons of your oil in a frying pan, over medium high heat and add a layer of tofu rectangles. You need to make sure there is no overlap. Fry each side until slightly brown and then flip them over and do the other side. Drain them on paper towels. I had to do three batches. The best type  of pan to use is of course a cast iron pan. I happened to use a heavy bottomed non-stick skillet this time around and it worked fine.
If you're pan runs dry of oil add another tablespoon. If there is not enough oil your tofu won't become golden brown and will dry out before giving you any colour.

Once the tofu is done add 4 tablespoons of the oil and fry the eggplant. Give it a good stir at the beginning so that all the pieces are coated with oil. Fry the eggplant until cooked through and possible browning. You'll need to stir it once every minute or so to make sure it browns evenly, and doesn't stick or burn. While you're doing this you can mix the sauce together. Just get a large enough bowl and mix all the "sauce" ingredients. You can also get your ginger and garlic ready. There should be plenty of time! Eggplant takes a while. Once the eggplant is cooked tip it out into a bowl and return the pan to the cooker.

If you are preparing other dishes and want this to go to the table piping hot you can stop right now. The rest will take you about 10 minutes to put together.

 Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan and tip in the ginger and garlic. Saute for 5 seconds. Don't let them burn, although browning is okay. Add the sauce, mix well and bring to the boil. Then add the tofu to the pan and bring it back to the boil. Use a slotted spoon to remove the tofu and arrange on a serving dish.

Add the eggplant to the pan and toss in the sauce. Bring to the boil and then using a slotted spoon spoon out and place on top of the tofu.

Finally add the greens to what is left of the sauce. Saute until cooked (i.e. the greens are limp) and tip the greens together with the remaining sauce onto the eggplant.

Serve steaming hot with jasmine rice or with udon noodles.

Here is a printable version

Half an Hour Vegetarian Stir Fry (Chinese)

My husband read my previous post and came home expecting a European stir fry (although I'm not quite sure what that would look like!). Unfortunate for him it turned out to be Chinese style :( But it still hit the spot.

So I decided to do this right and I set my kitchen timer to 30 minutes to make sure that it truly took half an hour. I must admit that together with setting things up to be photographed and taking the photographs half an hour is really stressful. But at least this time I managed it!

What I love about stir frying is that the cooking is done really quickly and you can use almost any vegetable you have at home. The down side is that all the chopping and cleaning of the vegetables takes a while. In keeping with my promise to have adequate protein in these meals I went out and bought some fresh tofu. We have this awesome Asian store just down the road from us that sells super fresh tofu. The tofu sits in a big blue basin of water in the fridge and is packed in a little bag for you to take home. The stuff doesn't last more than 3 days but it sure beats the vacuum packed type. And all that for just 1 Euro 10!! My mother-in-law frequently asks me to bring a stack when I go to visit. According to her it's the cheapest tofu around (okay that was when in cost only 90 cents!).

So here goes:

Serves around 8; preparation time: 30 mins!

Ingredients:

??	Jasmine rice
2 tbsp.	Oil
1	Onion
3 cloves	Garlic
6 slices	Ginger
3	Carrots
1 small	European eggplant
250 g	Mushrooms
1 block	Tofu
1 cup	Shitake mushrooms
2 cups	Chopped napa
3 tbsp.	Soya sauce
3 tbsp.	Corn starch
1 cup	Water
1	Vegetable cube
	Salt & Pepper
2 cups	Bean Sprouts

Method:

The very first thing you need to think about is whether you are going to use dried Shitake mushrooms or fresh ones. If you are then you have to soak them ahead of time. Anywhere between 24 hours and 30 minutes would do. Wash them first and then pour boiling water over them. Make sure every one is covered and then forget about them. Of course alternatively you could use fresh Shitake mushrooms but they are way more expensive and harder to get. We use the dried ones for three reasons. The first two are above and the third one is that I don't like the taste of fresh Shitake mushrooms!!

So first of all you need to cook the rice. With a bit of luck you have a rice cooker to do this. So you just have to figure out how much rice your family will eat and then throw it in there. I think we all pretty much know how much will be consumed. My family eats between 1 to 1.5 rice cooker cups of raw rice and they all dislike reheated rice so I try to guess if it's going to be a 1 cup day or a 1.5 cup day.

Once the rice is set to cook it's time to get busy with the washing and the chopping. First peel and cut the onion into 2 cm dice. Yes, I like the onions in my stir fry to be big just like in the tacky Chinese restaurants! Then peel and mince the garlic and slice the ginger. I slice my ginger very, very thin.

Next up are the carrots which have to be washed, peeled and then sliced. The thinner the slices the quicker it will cook and the longer it will take to chop. It's a bit of a trade off. 5 mm is probably optimum. Next wash and dice (1.5 cm) the eggplant. I'm in Germany, so I get Italian eggplant. It's large and fluffy and that's why I say use a small one. If I were to use a Chinese, Japanese or Sri Lankan eggplant I would just use a regular sized one.

Finally, wash and quarter the mushrooms. As you can see I used button mushrooms. If you are in SL you can use oyster mushrooms. They need to be super fresh and you don't have to cut them too small. Just keep in mind that oyster mushrooms lose a lot more water so you should probably reduce the added water to around 1/2 cup.

For this stir fry I used the largest wok that I own. Okay, it's not humongous but it's pretty big. There are a lot of vegetables here and before they are fully cooked they take up a lot of space. So the wok gets heated up and then the oil goes in. I used to put the oil in the wok and then heat the pan, but my father-in-law does it this way and he owned his own Chinese restaurant so... go figure! I later found out that the cold oil prevents things from sticking to the pan!

Put the oil in the wok and then the onions, garlic and ginger and stir fry for around 1 minute. [While it's frying take out your tofu and dice it into 2 cm pieces]. Then add the carrots to the onion mix and stir it well. Carrots take the longest so they go in first. Make sure you stir it and cook for 1-2 minutes during which time you can finish off chopping the tofu.

Next in go the eggplant and the mushrooms and that gets stir fried too. While you are stir frying you can cut up your shitake mushrooms. Since I use the dried variety I had to remove the stems and cut the caps into halves. How you cut the caps will depend on how large they are. Mine were really, really small. Taking the stems off takes forever but luckily the vegetables now need to cook a bit.

Once you are done with the shitake mushrooms then chop and wash the nappa, which is also known as Chinese cabbage. Throw this, the tofu and the mushrooms into the pan and stir it all up.

Now comes the sauce. Well I'm a bit lazy when it comes to sauces. I don't like to dirty an extra bowl to mix the sauce unless it is really necessary. So I just pour the sauces into the saucepan. I was running out of time because my vegetables were on the verge of being over cooked so there was no time to mix and photograph, so the sauces went directly into the pan. Pour in the soya sauce and then mix the corn starch with the cold water and pour this into the pan. Crush up the vegetable cube and sprinkle it on top. Then mix it all up. Now my family likes it's gravy so you'll find that this is a bit of a gravy heavy stir fry. The amount of gravy is adjustable, you just have to add less water. If you want a thicker gravy then once the water and corn starch has boiled take out a bit of the gravy from the pan, mix in some more corn starch and add it back into the pan. Make sure you allow it to boil because only then will the starch thicken the sauce.

Finally, while you let all the juices absorb and the tastes combine, quickly wash the bean sprouts and throw them in. I like to add them right at the end so that they are still crunchy when they are served. Oh and don't forget to season with salt and pepper. I almost always don't have enough salt in my cooking!! Generally I just forget about it. I've been trying really hard lately to remember to put enough salt but unless my recipe says "1 tsp. salt" I just sprinkle some in and hope for the best. I guess less salt is better than too much!

Serve pipping hot with the rice.