Poor Man's Eggplant with Garlic Sauce

Sometimes you want to make a satisfying bowl of eggplant in 15 minutes. When that mood strikes, you can make a simplified version of eggplant with garlic sauce. It's chunky, rustic, uncouth, no lovely sauce thickened with tapioca starch, no slivered veggies, no chopsticks, no zodiac placemat. Just a bowl of eggplant that gets the job done.

Ingredients 
2-3 chinese eggplants, cut in half and diagonal chunks
3-4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced (or coarsely chopped, if you love ginger like I do)
~3 tsp sesame oil
~3 Tbsp olive oil or another vegetable oil
soy sauce (3-4 seconds' worth when poured from a small Kikkoman bottle)
rice vinegar (1 second worth)
brown sugar (two good pinches)
1 small squirt of barbecue sauce (not authentic, but who cares)
optional: chili flakes

Method
Set your timer for 15 minutes.

Heat oils and add eggplant to the pan on medium heat. Fry both sides of eggplant until they show some color. The pieces might not be cooked through yet.

Add garlic and ginger. Add a little more oil if eggplants have soaked everything up. Turn heat down and fry with lid for 2 minutes. Add a dash of water and cook with lid for 5 more minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add all the sauce ingredients and sauté, first with lid, until eggplant is soft. Then remove the lid and cook off excess liquid until sauce bubbles slightly with sugars. Taste the sauce and adjust if needed, adding more soy sauce, vinegar, or sugar. If it's too salty, more vinegar and sugar will cut the salt.

Pile on top of rice that you've had in your freezer for two weeks and microwaved.

*ding* 15 minutes is up. Enjoy!