cook: mapo maybe

Husband brought home a bumper crop of eggplant, both a globe and lots of little Japanese fingerlings, which I cut up into bite-size pieces. I said, oh I should have cooked the globe eggplant into baba ghanoush. Lots more eggplant coming, replied husband. Still this was a lot of eggplant in one of my largest colanders.          

I knew I was going to cook the eggplant in an Asian sauce and wondered what is the difference between Mapo and Dan Dan Mian? Both incorporate Szechuan peppercorns, and I think that’s the only common ingredient. The Dan Dan Mian sauce I make includes peanut and tahini butters as well as Sichuan chili flakes, but like the Mapo I cooked last night also has lots of garlic, ginger and green onion. And instead of noodles, I cooked a combo of brown and long grain rice. I had ground pork and tofu in addition to eggplant as well as a jar of my homemade stir fry sauce (soy sauce, oyster sauce, dry sherry, cornstarch, sugar, sesame oil, ground white pepper), veggie bone broth, said garlic and ginger crushed into the mortar with additional sweet vermouth, chicken powder, Golden Mountain seasoning sauce and Momofuku soy sauce. I browned the pork and tofu with Chinese fermented black and broad beans from a jar with the only English I could find at an Asian market--the key ingredient in the Mapo--and then added the eggplant and everything else to braise.

 

It was not pretty, all muddy brown, but thank goodness for pops of color from emerald scallions and ruby red chili crisp.

 

My "mapo" needed more heat, but was still salty enough and umami satisfying.

I was also glad that I added a package of firm tofu which was another lovely texture in the dish. However, I'm going to eat the rest of the eggplant over noodles and dribbled with even more chili crisp.