Ambitious Deliciousness – Dont Eat Lazy.

This has got to be one of my favorite eggplant dishes, whenever I go to a Sichuan (Szechwan, Szechuan) restaurant, which is not very often.

I had a craving for this specific dish the other day and remembered that I had bookmarked this recipe from the lovely folks at Choosey Beggars a while ago. I included a handful of chilies, as well as extra spicy sauce, which was way to spicy for my liking. It’s been adjusted in the recipe below, so feel free to add more if you want more of a kick! The color is also darker than I’d like, because I went a little crazy with the dark soy sauce. OOPS.

For some reason, I expected this dish to be super complex, but it’s actually super easy to make! It actually tasted even better on the next day, so feel free to make extra to enjoy for a couple of days.

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[Thanks to everyone for your support in helping me raise funds for Haiti. I can't thank you enough! Please keep clicking!]

Last time I made green curry, I added too many bamboo shoots, causing the curry to be extra sour (gross). This time, I got rid of bamboo shoots altogether and focused on slow cooking a flavorful curry. I achieved this goal by slow cooking the curry for about 3 hours total. The end result was a thick, hearty, harmoniously flavored curry that I am super excited to share about!

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Despite the abundance of Korean dishes that grace this blog, I, for the life of me, cannot make a good pot of classic, Asian rice.

Yes, even with a rice cooker.

For the longest time, I would end up with a soupy goo. Then I would over comepensate by not adding enough water and end up with nasty, brick like grains. It wasn’t until years later that my sister told me that I was using the wrong part of the hand to measure the rice:water.

So when you have a big pot of dry rice, you roll with it and make fried rice. Since I didn’t have any other ingredients on hand, I went with eggplant, which turned out to be a good combination.

What can I say, we can’t be good at everything.  Have any of you experienced a similar frustration in the kitchen?

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I’d like to open this post with a little story.

During my two year stint as a vegetarian (yes I was, and no I’m not anymore), I was happily chomping away on a eggplant parmesan sandwich when my friend asked me for a bite. Since I’m so kind hearted, I obliged – only to be accused of eating chicken! My friend was so convinced that it was chicken. It took me a good 5 minutes to convince him otherwise. The moral of the story – don’t share food.

Moving on.

There are so many delicious ways to prepare eggplant. This is another improvised dish that I ate with a side of rice. Makes for a good weeknight dinner, especially when you’re avoiding the oven like the plague during the summer months (like me!).

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On our way to lunch on Saturday in Astoria, we passed by this grocery store called Tomato. It was one of those unassuming stores with produce outside. There were these beautiful, gigantic eggplants caught my eye – and for merely $.69 a pound.

I grabbed two of them and a bunch of parsley for $2.53! Even produce shopping is fun when you’re with friends I must go back there soon, especially since farmers markets are closed for the winter.

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Don’t you hate it when you’re all ready to make something and realize that you either don’t have enough of a key ingredient? Or worse yet, it spoiled?!

That’s what happened to me. I had a beautiful yellow bell pepper but I waited too long to cook it. Since I had mentally gotten ready to cook, there was no turning back. I went to the grocery store really quick and got bell peppers. They didn’t have any yellow ones so I grabbed a couple of red and green ones.

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The weather is growing significantly colder by the day. It’s time to bundle up and wish for hibernation!! Well, before I start worrying about being cold… I’ll just enjoy the brisk air, beautiful foliage and apple cider!

This dish was created after picking up a lovely eggplant from the farmers market. I’ve never cooked with eggplant before so I thought I’d take an easy stir-fry route and experiment with more complicated dishes next time. Feel free to leave me your favorite eggplant recipe in the comments.

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