Weeknight dinner: Sticky and sweet san choy bow
San Choy Bow is like one of my best frenemies - I love it and I hate it. I mean it's delicious but I can never decide if it's a meal or a snack? Either way I seem to be leaning on it quite a lot these days whenever I feel that perhaps I need to bulk up on the freshness in my diet but don't want a salad, because it's isolation and it's winter and who likes salad at the best of times?
San Choy Bow turns out to be one of those very Australianised traditional Chinese recipes, where we have westernised it to suit our preferences... in keeping with that tradition I have subbed what in Australia is the traditional pork filling for a mushroom and eggplant version. I came up with this idea a few months ago when I was trying to ensure we ate more meat-free dishes that weren't pasta. I made it maybe five times in different variations before I found my fave combo (shout out to Dad who ate this dish in various iterations three times before admitting he did not like mushrooms!)
Mushrooms are the star of this dish, any mushroom will do, but I prefer a blend of King Oyster Mushroom and dried shiitake for their texture. The eggplant is key though to make it more of a meal (a light meal.... or a heavy snack).
What you need:
1 medium sized Eggplant cut into bite sized chunks
200g mushroom (a mixture of fresh and rehydrated shiitake)
2 tbs of peanut oil
1 tbs soy
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 clove garlic
1.5 cm of ginger
Squeeze of lemon
Let's do This:
Eggplant, my dear friend/nemesis always takes way longer to cook than I anticipate, so to battle this let's start with cooking the eggplant. Take the bit-sized eggplant pieces in 1 tbs of peanut oil on a high to medium-high heat.
Once the eggplant is coated in the oil place a lid on the pot (or in my case a small bowl that completely covers the eggplant) to allow the eggplant to steam for about 5-8 minutes.
After you've let the eggplant steam for a little bit remove the lid (if you use a bowl do this very carefully because the steam can burn you, she says from experience. I use tongs and lift the bowl from the side furthest away from me #SAFETYFIRST).
Continue cooking the eggplant for about 5 minutes or until it starts to caramelise on the outside. Caramelise is a nice way of saying go brown because the eggplant won't go sticky or caramel yet, it will just brown on the outside - keep an eye on it though you don't want to blacken it.
Moving quickly add the second table spoon of peanut oil, and grate in the clove of garlic, the 1.5 cm piece ginger and add a tablespoon of soy sauce, and mushroom to the eggplant.
After the soy sauce cooks off a bit turn the heat down and add in the tablespoon of oyster sauce coating all the veggies.
Once the veggies are coated, leave the pan until the sauce starts getting a nice sticky sheen. Depending on how hot your pan is this could take less than a minute or closer to five. You want the oyster sauce to thicken into a glossy, tacky sauce. If you have a non-stick pan, you will notice the sauce does sticks more to the vegetables than the pan.
To serve, wash some lettuce leaves (may I recommend butter lettuce) and squeeze some lemon on the mushroom and eggplant mixture for some lip smacking chef kiss vibes. This recipe makes six lettuce cups, and can be served with rice for a more filling meal.
This recipe makes 6 lettuce cups, and can be served with rice for a more filling meal. Pricing this recipe is difficult because of the variations in price depending on the lettuce, mushroom or sauces you use, between $14.70 to $25.95 for the total dish, that is roughly $2.45 to $4.33 a lettuce cup.
I'm experimenting with new ways to write recipes that will help you in your cooking process. This includes trying to include the measurements in the instructions themselves as well as making more fluid recipes that inspire ideas and dinners, because I know from personal experiences sometimes that is preferable! Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or hit me up on sosh meeds.