Chinese for dinner

I recently finished reading Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking. It's a pretty awesome book which definitely gave me a hankering for some Chinese food. Separately, Josh was reading about making your own scallion pancakes on Serious Eats so when he sent me a link to scallion pancakes from scratch, I was on board with that plan.

That Sunday was supposed to be a day of cooking. I wanted to pick up a brisket on Saturday and then smoke it Texas-style on the Egg. But I had communication difficulties with the meat counter at DFM and that just did not work out. Sad.

And then on Sunday, Josh wasn't feeling well, so I hit up the Buford Highway FM solo. I wandering aimlessly through the aisles picking up the things I needed. I had planned to make clams with black bean sauce, but they neither had littleneck clams (just the big'uns) nor mung bean starch (which I would have probably subbed in cornstarch for anyway). So that was out of the question. Since Josh was a little unwell anyway, it's probably for the best. Not that I wasn't planning on just eating them all myself...

We had a large pile of Chinese eggplants. Four of them. So I made a very large batch of a "spicy eggplant with pork" recipe that I found online. Frankly, I thought it would be easier to find this recipe because I grew up eating it all the time. But I stole it off a random website.

I did like how this recipe came together even if I expected it to be too heavy based on ingredients like oyster sauce and both light and dark soys. You start off by cutting up the eggplant and soaking it in salty water. Then you saute garlic, ginger, and shallot before adding the eggplant and letting it cook til soft. (You are totally supposed to add chili paste here to make it spicy, but I didn't have any so...)

Separately, you marinate for the ground pork with soy, sugar, corn oil, and a bit of water. Then you saute the pork with garlic, ginger, shallots, and the chili paste, if you have it. I really like how this adds extra flavor to your pork. Then when that's done, you put it on the side.

When the eggplants are soft, you add the pork plus your "seasoning mixture" which includes the soys, oyster sauce, salt, sugar, water, sesame oil. Saute. Add a slurry of cornstarch and water if you want it thicker/saucier, which I did. Done!

Turned out pretty well. I'll want to try it with the chili paste next time.

I also decided to make beef with scallions which is both easy and one of Josh's favorites. Because I am running low on my favorite soy, I used some tamari instead. I think it was a little saltier but still okay. Josh didn't say anything which means either he didn't notice or he didn't want me to get mad! Anyway, I need to move us away from my normal soy when the soy gets cooked.

Still no scallion pancakes. One of these days...