Country 7: Stuffed Eggplant from China

A dish like this is one of the exact reasons I started this project. I don't think I would have ever found this recipe on my own and if I did, I'm not sure I would have given it a shot because my wife is not a seafood fan. But with her blessing I made these little dumpling substitutes and they turned out great!

The recipe for this was from a video that I will link below, and explained a bit more about its origins, so most of my information about it comes from there (definitely recommend watching). This is a meal made by the Hakka people of China. From this video I learned that as the Hakka people were forced Southward from Northern China, they had to adapt their cooking as wheat was not as available in the South. This meant instead of making dumplings, they made stuffed vegetables, like the stuffed eggplants seen here.

As far as the meal, it was great, although I will say the woman in the video made the spreading the filling onto the eggplant look way easier than it was!! The whitefish filling was flavourful and balanced ("not fishy tasting at all" - my wife's high praise). The eggplant soaked up the sauce that you pour in during frying and was so tender! I think from now on I'm going to use chinese eggplants for all eggplant meals, they are so much better than North American eggplant because of how tender they are (when I first picked them up I thought they werent' good because they are much softer than other eggplants I've tried). Its a very hearty, filling dish and goes great with some sriracha, although I dont know how authentic that part is, I just like spice.

I want to say thank you to Alena and Susan for this recipe. Alena was kind enough to share my little adventure with her seemingly endless amounts of facebook friends and asked for help finding new recipes for me. Susan gave this recipe and its something I appreciate so much because as I said earlier, I probably would have never found this. You'll see more recipes in the future coming from this facebook thread. Thanks again to you both!

Till the next meal!

Brandon

Please enjoy the video of this recipe here ( https://youtu.be/wx9olH0qWeo) the updated map below: