Eggplants Abroad, Episode 1: China

 BREAKING NEWS FROM ABROAD

(not that any news station actually words it like that)

China correspondent Jon Mitchell has returned from Beijing with pictures and descriptions of tasty eggplants, as pieced together from e-mails:

My advisor... arrived in Beijing on Monday, and we met up on Tuesday and ate out at a really neat regional restaurant (I forget the region), but the only vegetarian dish we had was eggplant. It was green eggplant steamed with peppers and onion in a tasty, sweet-sauce of unknown composition (I can't even fathom a guess without having it again--not that I'd mind that!).

The other eggplant dish (pictured below) is from a restaurant around the corner from my hotel. They chop up eggplant, potato* and chicken and stir fry it in a sauce that (I think) I can replicate. As near as I can tell, what they do is they simmer bacon and hot peppers in a small amount of water, a smidge of soy sauce and fish sauce, and then reduce it down and cook the potato/chicken/eggplant with some ginger and garlic to produce a very tasty variant of stir-fry. I'm not positive about the methods of making the sauce, but that's how I intend to try and replicate it when I am home with my stove again! I think a possible vegetarian version would involve oil (sesame would probably work best), salt, and maybe some tomato to replace the bacon-portion of the sauce (although I've no idea how to sub fish sauce...unless oyster sauce works?), with tofu replacing chicken.

*And, to be fair, I should say "potato". It's some kind of root that has the consistency, but not quite the flavor, of potato. Also, it isn't very common. I've yet to see it in any provincial restaurants, or at any street vendors; I've only seen it in Beijing-style restaurants. Beijing-style food tends to attempt to emulate Western food, to be "richer" I guess, and so is much blander and much stranger than "real Chinese" (the provincial style restaurants).

Below is an image of a hutong market (hutongs are these small, residential areas that are basically super windy alleyways where "real people" live in Beijing) with giant purple eggplants for sale.

Also... a spicy eggplant dish that was pretty tasty. It was eggplant, bell pepper and spicy peppers in a sugary-salty glaze. There were a lot of different types of flavors going on, but few ingredients. It mostly seemed like eggplant/bell pepper/cucumber simmered in sugar water with hot peppers that was then heavily salted, but it was delicious!

As for the eggplant story: one of my vegetarian friends and I were walking around downtown Beijing looking for some dinner the other day. We kept passing meat-on-a-stick places, but were struggling to find a vegetarian alternative. Eventually, we chanced upon a place that had uncooked eggplants, and tofu-wrapped chives on sticks! Success, we thought! And so, in broken Mandarin we attempted to place an order, only to find the guy behind the hot plate giving us confused looks and calling this woman over. She then proceeded to change our order, and they removed the vegetables from the sticks and cooked them in a stir-fry manner. The woman then grabbed my friend and I by the arm and hauled us bodily inside, and then pointed at a menu that said 8 yuan (we had already paid for the vegetables outside), took our money, and return with two large bowls of soup, and our cooked veggies. I'm still not sure what, exactly, happened, but it was delicious!

This concludes today’s Beijing report. A round of applause for our China correspondent.

If you are abroad and wish to share your eggplant adventures, please send descriptions and/or photos to abigail.fine@gmail.com. Eggplants Abroad will be an ongoing series.

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