braised eggplants with seafood 海鮮茄子煲

I have not cooked with eggplants for close to a decade. The challenge with them is they taste rather blend by themselves. I used to cooked them with minced pork. The slender Asian variety tastes better than the big and fat ones to me. I recently came across this video of an eggplant dish that is braised with seafood and I immediately want to make a similar one but with my own twist. I actually went to bed and could not get it off my mind as I could imagine how delicious the dish can be.
It happened that I went to a Korean store to look for some soy bean sprouts that I wanted in the Sichuan water poached beef 四川麻辣水煮牛肉, that I spotted some nice Asian eggplants. I felt bad to only buy one thing so I looked for a few things to buy, which include a couple of eggplants and a bag of glutinous rice cakes that Koreans love.

Asian eggplants (left most) and glutinous rice cakes (right most); napa cabbage and soy bean sprouts (center)

the video that inspire this dish that I made


What the video inspired me is the use of fermented bean paste and pre-frying the eggplant under high heat. I knew that with the right choice of seafood and pork the dish can be made very delicious. I also added the slices of glutinous rice cakes to make it into a meal. I based my dish loosely on the video but with my own intuition of an improvised recipe. The Gulf shrimps, sea scallops, cuttlefish, and marinated pork slices are all from the freezer. I also added a bit of black tree fungus.


Chinese celery香芹菜 - it is called fragrance celery for very good reasons

fermented bean paste is very similar to miso - the magic is how the bean paste is transformed when fried in oil briefly; as I don't want heat I use this plain bean paste without chili for this dish

a splash of this cooking wine make all the difference; I also added some sake to the pot as well

you don't see all the ingredients as some are buried under the seafood and pork slices

a sensible serving; you can see the big chunks of juicy eggplant that soak up the rich sauce; you don't see the slices of glutinous rice cake underneath though

As usual, I don't cook with a recipe. One reason is I seldom cook that same dish with the same recipe twice as there is always opportunity for improvements. I would just list the ingredients I used:

• Asian egg plants
• dried black tree fungus
• chopped garlic
• chopped shallot onion
• slice ginger
• cooking oil
• salt
• fermented bean paste
• oyster sauce
• soy sauce
• Chinese cooking wine
• sake
• ground pepper
• wild Gulf shrimps
• sea scallops
• cuttlefish slices
• marinated pork slices
• glutinous rice cake (sliced)
• water
• scallions
• cilantro

it is redundant to say how delicious this dish is