Recipe of the Month: Spicy(ish) Tofu and Eggplant

In the month or so since Brian figured out how to make Sesame Tofu, we've already had it several times. Obviously, we like this recipe a lot, but there's one problem with it: since our new version uses only half a pound of tofu at a time, it leaves us with an extra half-pound of tofu to use up. Unfortunately, we don't have that many recipes in our standard repertoire that call for tofu. There's this Thai Stir-Fry we tried last summer, but it calls for fresh green beans, which aren't in season right now. So that pretty much leaves only regular stir-fry or pad Thai to choose from, and having either of those several times in a month would get pretty old.

Thumbing through our cookbooks in search of some new alternatives, I came across one in The Clueless Vegetarian that I had bookmarked years ago, but never actually tried. It was called Spicy Tofu and Eggplant, and it called for a pound of tofu, one medium eggplant, and two tablespoons of Chinese chili paste. (The recipe says you should "feel free" to cut down on this ingredient, as it's very spicy as written; since I am a total spice wimp, I figured we'd probably cut it down to around one teaspoon.) I though two of the skinny Chinese eggplants we normally buy at H-Mart would be equivalent to one regular eggplant, so we could easily make a half recipe of this whenever we needed to use up some extra tofu. All the other ingredients (soy sauce, brown sugar, sherry, sesame oil, cornstarch, vegetable oil, fresh ginger, garlic, and scallions) were things we routinely keep on hand.

All, that is, except one: the chili paste. When I chose the recipe, I thought I remembered having a jar of this in the back of the fridge, but Brian reminded me that we'd actually discarded it last time we cleaned out the fridge, which was actually quite a while back. He argued that the Panang curry paste we had in the fridge would make a perfectly good substitute, but I argued that it's not the same flavor at all; a Panang tofu and eggplant curry might indeed be tasty, but it really wouldn't be the same dish the author had in mind. The cookbook suggested substituting "a dash of hot pepper sauce" for each tablespoon of chili paste, but that wasn't much help, since we don't keep that on hand either. (Did I mention I'm a spice wimp?)

So we ended up putting off making this dish until we could pick up something that would serve for the chili paste. On our next trip to Trader Joe's, we spotted a bottle of something labeled "sweet chili sauce" for only a buck fifty, and we decided the ingredients in that (water, sugar, red chili, tapioca starch, garlic, acetic acid, and salt) sounded close enough to a Chinese chili paste to make a reasonable, if milder, equivalent. After tasting it, in fact, Brian said it was so mild he thought we could probably make the recipe as written, with the full two tablespoons.

So, last night, Brian prepared a half batch of this (though he used two small Chinese eggplants instead of one). I don't want to transcribe the whole recipe here, but basically, you cube and drain the tofu; cube and steam the eggplant; mix up a sauce from the brown sugar, sherry, sesame oil, cornstarch, and water; get your wok hot, and saute all the ingredients (first the ginger and garlic, then the chili paste, and then everything else) until they're heated through; and serve it over rice. So once all the prep was done, the actual cooking went quite quickly.

The result was tasty, though our substitution of the chili sauce for chili paste made it quite a bit milder than intended. Wimpy as I am, even I thought it could have used a touch more heat. So next time, we might add just a wee pinch of cayenne to bring the flavor up a little. We could probably also leave out the brown sugar, since the chili sauce is fairly sweet on its own.

But even if it wasn't hot, it wasn't lacking in flavor, and the combination of textures was nice. Neither of us was so excited by this dish that we wanted to make it again as soon as possible, but we both enjoyed it enough to consider it a reasonable addition to our tofu repertoire.