Recipe Brinjal with Minced Pork

One of the beauty of cooking while not working, is that u have the luxury of time to explore for a novice like me. I can finally understand why my mum use to sit in the kitchen taking hours pouring over her recipe book for ideas before cooking dinner.

As anyone who has used a recipe book will know that all recipes need tweaking (even the best ones), simply to customise it closer to our taste (the way we rem how our mum cook it)... And my advice, invest in a REALLY GOOD cook book that has most of the recipes that you will actually cook. Not just nice pictures to stare at.

So last nite when I was pondering seriously what to cook (ran out of meat options after the last few days of dinner marathon), I flip a few pages and went to the supermart for "hope for the best idea". I stumble across brinjal and I thought "what the hell, let's give it a try". Brinjal is something alien to cook, though i rem my mum cooked it with very hot chilli sauce back then.

So i ventured into what may be "Brinjal with minced meat" non-spice version of mine.

Recipe steps

1. Cut up the 3 mid size brinjal (eggplant) into slices and soak them in little salt water. (slightly thinner than mac donald nuggut thickness for each slice. any thicker will take longer to cook and become soggy)

2. Prepare 2 cloves of smashed garlic, 4 cloves of minced garlic, 3 pieces of slice of ginger.

3. Heat up 1 tablespoon of oil, throw in the smashed whole garlics, and add the drained brinjals into the wok and stir fry till soft with high heat. Remove from wok

4. Add another 2 tablesppon of oil to clean wok. Add minced garlic, sliced ginger, few pieces of deseeded finely sliced red chilli (if its those thai mini hot chilli, add maybe accordingly of level of spice tolerance) and stir till garlic is slight brown. (like wat 30secs)

5. Add one and half teaspoon black pepper sauce mixed with 2 tablespoon of water to wok.

6. Add in 120-150 gram of minced pork and stir fry together.

7. Add sauce ingredients (1 tablespoon of light soy sauce, 1/2 teaspoon of roasted sesame oil, 1/2 teaspoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon chinese wine, 1 teaspoon of corn starch flour, half cup of chicken stock)

8. When the minced pork looks almost cooked and change in colour, throw in the cooked brinjal to blend with flavour. Stir fry for another few mins and when pork is cook, its done!

What the cookbook doesnt tell me, is that minced pork absorbed water very quickly. So keep a look out. If u like gravy based, prob add more chicken stock, if u prefer dry version, the half cup will do and need not bother with the corn flour really. Plus, cook book version was using hot bean paste which i didnt have, so i improvised and swop it with black pepper sauce in a bottle instead.

Also, during the stir fry portion of the minced pork, actually we can taste it and add sugar or salt, or water to dilute the taste, to suit our own preference. I guess if they include all these in the cook book, it will be really thick huh..