I picked up some Japanese eggplants from the local farm stand, and I really wanted to try making Chinese-restaurant style eggplant and tofu and garlic sauce with them. I googled the heck out of it, and found a Fuschia Dunlop recipe for the eggplant that looked promising (and required a trip to Mom's House for yet another Chinese condiment, chili and broad bean paste). Then I thought I would just add the tofu. In trying to get that chewy sort of texture for the tofu, I took some online advice and froze it. OI. Why didn't it occur to me that the tofu would freeze rock hard? I pulled it out just as I was starting dinner and found frozen chunks of tofu that I was somehow supposed to shallow fry. Oops. So anyway, Jason somehow managed to slice it up, and I figured we had nothing to lose, so I just threw it into the oil. It took a while, but did eventually fry up into nice brown pieces, crispy outside and chewy inside! Meanwhile I was also frying up the eggplant and assembling the sauce (and forgetting about the Chinese broccoli so that I had to hastily stir-fry it with some garlic and sesame oil. Meh at best).
ANYWAY, I finally got all that frying done and assembled everything. The smell and taste of the broad bean paste was very nice, but the finished dish was disappointing. My carefully fried pieces of eggplant just dissolved, much to my irritation. There wan't quite enough sauce, I didn't like the broccoli, Carter was decidedly lukewarm....A lot of trouble for a workday. The bright spot is that freezing the tofu really did work----just make sure you give it time to thaw! And next time, just get take-out.
No comments:
Post a Comment