Black garlic, mushrooms, umami for miles

Back in Honolulu after a trip to Germany and Austria. Normally I scour places I visit for aubergine inspiration, but this time I got lazy and quested for the best vegan gummies. (The answer: none of them. They're all basically just Swedish fish.)

Fortunately my trip wasn't eggplant-less: I satisfied my Szechuan craving at Da Jia Le in Berlin, where I became hypnotized by this fiery red eggplant hot-pot:

My favorite dish there, which I also ate during a visit to Berlin last year, is the tofu cilantro salad. It's a cold salad with thin strips of that dense, pressed, smoky tofu with a brown skin + garlicky red chili sauce + black vinegar + fresh cilantro. It's way sweeter, saltier, and oilier than anything I have the nerve to make at home, and it's addictive.

All of this resulted in a craving for chili oil, fresh woodear mushrooms (see hot pot pic above), and earthy spicy umami. But since I'm no pro at Szechuan cooking and don't have any of the right ingredients at home, I had to adapt.

When I got home, it seemed the perfect time for cooking. The recipe for procrasticooking follows:
1) get on a plane
2) travel for almost 30 hours without sleeping
3) crash in your bed and marvel at how much comfier it is than all the German and Austrian beds
4) despite utter exhaustion, find yourself unable to sleep because of the 12-hour time difference
5) spend the first day back home in a total funk of jetlag
6) go to the Japanese superstore and buy Japanese versions of Chinese ingredients
7) COOK STUFF to stay awake

Recipe: Jetlagged eggplant
or
Eggplant, shimeji mushrooms, and tofu with black garlic sauce
on the side: fresh wood ear mushroom and cucumber salad

Ingredients
3 Japanese or Chinese eggplants
1 container fresh shimeji mushrooms or other mushrooms of choice
1/2 block extra firm tofu
3-4 cloves black garlic [homemade by my mother; yes I'm spoiled]
soy sauce to taste
sesame oil
olive oil or other cooking oil of choice

That's it. The simplest recipe I've made for a while. Black garlic is flavorful, but it can be easily overpowered, so I experimented with using very few ingredients to let it shine. It works well with mushrooms and complements those earthy, dark flavors.

Method
Create the sludge. Black garlic can be pulverized in a little water with a fork. Take out whatever firm pieces are failing to dissolve and mash them with a knife into a paste, then mix together until it creates this:

Umami is often not pretty. It's sludgy, fermented, gaseous and brown.

Mix the sludge with soy sauce to taste, but careful not to overwhelm the garlic flavor. If it's too dense, like a paste, add a dash of water until it resembles a sauce.

Cut up the eggplants and shimeji mushrooms. Sauté the eggplants first in sesame oil and olive oil, giving them a strong head start (that is, almost fully cooked) before adding the mushrooms.

Remember: eggplants need lots of oil. Don't skimp.

While eggplants are cooking, marvel at how their little heads sport 1960s haircuts.

Add the sauce and let it soak into the veggies, with most of the liquid boiling off. Turn down the heat to give the eggplants time to cook fully.

Tear up the tofu like feta and mix it lightly, coating it with the sauce. Note: the tofu I buy is from a local producer and it has an exquisite flavor and texture, way better than major national brands. For this reason I like to treat it simply and bring out its natural flavor. But if you prefer, you can always fry or bake your tofu cubes first to give them a chewy skin, then add them to this dish.

DONE.

And now for the wood ear salad:

Ingredients
Fresh wood ear mushrooms (or: dried and reconstituted in boiling water)
1 cucumber, peeled and sliced [note: I like to remove the seeds but it's optional]
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large hunk of ginger, minced

Sauce (all quantities to taste; and that, friends, is why this blog will never be read because I just can't bring myself to measure things):
soy sauce
black rice vinegar
chili oil, to taste depending on spice level
sesame oil
sugar

Method
Sauté the wood ear mushrooms in sesame oil OR boil them briefly and strain. Either method works; just cook the mushrooms. Note that they won't change much in appearance, except perhaps looking glossier. Stir up the sauce, coat everything, and marinate in the fridge. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.

A bowl of brown things. That's what happens when you go mushroom crazy at Don Quijote.*

*Don Quijote: the Japanese superstore in Honolulu. Where else can you buy a rice cooker, Korean beauty products, unusual mushrooms, hula skirts, and poke all in the same day? (Answer: basically every grocery store in Honolulu.)