The first time I really enjoyed an eggplant dish was when I had something like this in Japan. Japanese eggplant is a long, skinny variety with less seeds than its more rotund cousin. Served with ground pork, carrots and a sweet/sour soy sauce, it’s delicious. Here’s one way to learn how to eat more vegetables even when you think you don’t like them.
At my local supermarket, Chinese eggplant is easier to find than the Japanese variety. It has a similar shape, but a lighter color. So, cut into finger sized pieces, that’s what I used here. I had a little ground beef in the freezer, so that’s what I used instead of pork.
In Japan, meat is not the main event. For the most part, it’s a little something added to a vegetable dish. Ground pork is what’s most readily available and 1/3 of a pound would be plenty for a dish serving more than 4 people. So whatever beef I used here was more than enough. Ground turkey would impart a milder flavor. Use whatever you have or make a vegetarian version if you prefer.
Making the Sauce
The sauce that I originally sampled and used to use comes from a box. I try to use as few prepackaged ingredients as possible these days, so here’s what I experimented with before adding the vegetables and meat to the skillet:
- sesame oil (keep that in the refrigerator)
- minced garlic
- minced ginger (from my treasure chest of freezer flavor gems)
- rice vinegar
- mirin (sweet cooking sake)
- Go-chu-jang (Korean style hot/sweet sauce)
- soy sauce
- a tiny bit of miso paste mixed with chicken stock
It’s been a long time since I had the boxed sauce, so I don’t recall its exact flavor. I think it was labeled as a Chinese sauce in fact. In any case, I tasted and adjusted seasonings until I thought I had achieved a pleasing balance before adding the raw vegetables and meat that I had already cooked. Adding a touch of liquid as needed and a pinch of sugar near the end finished this simple meal. As I recall, green bell pepper was in this original dish, but I didn’t think about it while preparing this and it was fine without. Variety and experimentation are essential to finding out how easy it is to eat more vegetables when you previously hadn’t liked them.
I like serving stir fried vegetables like this over rice. I often have some leftover rice to use on such an occasion because I make double what we will use for one meal so that I can whip together something fast with it over the following days. It simplifies my life. Pictured above, my brown rice had been mixed with mushrooms and kale and all these flavors married well.
Are some of these ingredients unfamiliar to you? They are items that I always keep on hand among other pantry items. Certainly you could make the sauce with fewer ingredients, but I encourage you to experiment with a variety of ethnic products if you can locate them. Especially with the abundance of online retailers, it shouldn’t be too difficult. Have you discovered miso paste yet? Look in the refrigerated section near the kimchee and won ton wrappers. Changing things up a bit may be just what you need in order to learn how to eat more vegetables when you don’t like them.