Smoky Wok

Are you a fan of eggplant? The creamy texture of cooked eggplant makes a great topping for both rice and noodles.  Today's feature is a very easy and simply delicious noodle dish you can whip up in a matter of minutes.  For a non-spicy dish, simply skip the chili peppers.  I used to dislike eggplant when I was younger as I thought the texture was a little weird but then of course as one grows older, tastes change and definitely become more accepting so to speak.  This dish was made with some dried wheat noodles and topped with delicious eggplant stir-fried with garlic, chili peppers and just soy sauce for flavour. 



One thing to note when cooking eggplant is that you should give the eggplant a quick stir-fry with a little bit of oil in the wok prior to cooking to seal in the eggplant a little as eggplant is like sponge and will absorb a lot of oil while being stir-fried.  If you want to make this dish even creamier, you can add some miso paste to thicken the sauce as well.  I hope you will give this a try soon!



This recipe is part of my Yuen Chun Recipes, an ongoing project on this blog.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

2 medium sized eggplant, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 red chili peppers, sliced
1 tablespoon light soy sauce or to taste (I used Yuen Chun)
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
Dash of sesame oil
Dash of white pepper

2 clusters of dried noodles or substitute with noodles of your choice

1 teaspoon corn starch with 2 tablespoons water

Method:

Cook the noodles according to package instructions.  Rinse and set aside.

Firstly, heat up your wok until almost smoking.  Add 1 tablespoon oil and swirl to coat.  Fry the eggplant slices for about 2 minutes or until colour deepens.  Remove eggplant slices and set aside.

Clean the wok.  Heat up the wok until almost smoking again.  Add 2 tablespoons cooking oil.  Swirl to coat.  Turn heat to low.  Add garlic and chili peppers.  Fry till aromatic.  Add in the eggplants and stir-fry for 1 minute.  Turn heat to high.  Add light and dark soy sauce.  Stir around to coat well.  Add the sesame oil and pepper.

Mix 1 teaspoon corn starch with 2 tablespoons water.  Add into the eggplant.  Turn heat to low and cover to simmer for about 10 minutes or until eggplant softens.  Do a taste test and add more soy sauce if desired.

Place the noodles in serving plates.  Top the noodles with the eggplants.  Serve hot.