Meatless Everyday: Eggplant with Garlic Sauce

Woks of Life had this really great looking Eggplant with Garlic Sauce recipe.  I would highly recommend going to their site to find the recipe.  They have amazing pictures, unlike my crappy ones.  And detailed instructions.  My version is basically the same with minor adaptations.

Eggplant with Garlic Sauce
adapted from Woks of Life, "Eggplant with Garlic Sauce"

First make the sauce:

1 Tbs broad bean paste with chili (Ming Teh is my favorite brand)
1 tsp Kadoya Pure Sesame Oil  (this is my favorite brand)
1 Tbs soy sauce
2 tsp Pure Evaporated Cane Juice Sugar (most white sugar is not vegan)
1 Tbs cooking wine (I was out of shoaxing wine)
1 tsp vegan fish sauce (try this one out at Vegan Miam)

Then prep the rest of the ingredients:

6 cups of eggplant (I used a globe eggplant) cut into pieces (look at their pics to see approx. size)
2 scallions cut into 2 inch lengths (I just sprinkled them on top instead of cooking them)
3 Tbs oil
4 oz. meatless ground beef (I used gardein)
1/2 Tbs julienned ginger (I like a lot of ginger)
1 tsp crushed dried chilies (I used one broken up dried red chili and you'd take a bite with a piece of it and want to die because it was so hot.  I'd say put a few pinches in of in so it gets distributed more evenly)
4 cloves of crushed garlic
1 Tbs cooking wine (again, I ran out of  shoaxing wine)

The rest is easy:

1. Heat a tablespoon of oil on high heat and add half the eggplant.  Sear it all around, maybe 5 minutes.  Then repeat with the second batch.

2. Heat the third tablespoon of oil and add the meatless ground beef and the ginger. Once the "meat" starts to brown, add the garlic and red pepper.

3.  Then throw the eggplant back in with the sauce you made, plus 1 Tbs of cooking wine (idk why you can't just add that extra cooking wine to the sauce...maybe next time.)

4.  Top with scallions and serve with rice.

I could literally eat this every day.

I used Sri Lankan red rice, because it's healthier...and I'm Sri Lankan....

I also served it with Dry Fried Lotus Root.  You can find the recipe in Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees: Essential Techniques of Authentic Chinese Cooking, which for the record is amazing.  You can turn most of the recipes into vegan versions.

You probably don't have a lot of these ingredients.  I do, because I practically live at HMart.  But I included a bunch of Amazon Affliate links for some of the stuff.  Everything's online people, don't let unusual ingredients stop you from trying new things!