HowieCOOK: BA DA BING, Shaoxing glazed eggplant

Hello HowieCOOK fans. My last two posts left you hanging and left me thinking: What would be the perfect result when the Purple Provocateur (that's my fancy name for eggplant) and Chinese rice wine were on a collision course? Think: You got your Shaoxing wine on my eggplant. No! You got your eggplant in my Shaoxing wine! And, so on. Well, finally I offer you the recipe that has all the blogosphere a buzzing. Or, is that the native buzzing in my head? Whatever the clinical case may be, I give you...

BA DA BING!
Grilled pork-stuffed eggplant cakes with a Shaoxing rice wine glaze
(Start this recipe 75 minutes before you want to eat.)

In Mandarin Chinese, Ba means eight, Da means big, and Bing means cake. Ba Da Bing or Eight big cakes is my interpretation of super-stuffed Chinese eggplant cakes on the grill, made shiny and sweet with a unique rice wine glaze. Why eight? The Chinese feel that eight is a very lucky number and if you follow the letter of the recipe, and make expected mistakes the first time, you should still yield eight nicely sized cakes for each eggplant you use!

SHOPPING NOTE: Buy the widest eggplant you can find, so that when you slice them in rounds, the cakes won't likely fall through the grates of your grill. Do not use typical, huge Globe eggplants for this recipe. The skin is terribly thick and there usually are too many seeds. Also, shop at a farmers market or a local farm store to buy fresh, sweeter, less brittle eggplant.

Glaze
1 1/2 C - Shaoxing wine or dry sherry
1/2 C - Light brown sugar
1/2 C - Soy sauce
1 clove - Garlic lightly smashed but still one piece

Eggplant
2 - Chinese or Japanese eggplant, cut between 1/8 and 1/4 inch inch round slices

Filling
1 lb - Ground pork
1 Tb - Shaoxing wine or dry sherry
1 - Egg white
1 Tb - Soy sauce
1 lg. clove - Garlic minced
1/2 Tb - Ginger minced
1 Tb - Scallion, white part minced
1 tsp - Table salt
1/2 tsp - White pepper
1 tsp - Granulated sugar
2 Tb - Corn starch or tapioca starch

Start by mixing your glaze ingredients together. In a small sauce pot over no heat, whisk up the Shaoxing or sherry with the brown sugar, soy sauce and garlic. Once combined, up the heat to high. Once you see an active bubbling, lower the heat back to medium-high, let the mix reduce until it has a wet pancake syrup consistency, about 15 min. Then, remove the garlic and set the glaze aside, off the heat.

Mix together your filling ingredients in a bowl. The mixture will appear to be wet and somewhat sticky. This is a good thing. You will soon want the filling to stick to the insides of a rather dry eggplant slice. If the mix appears to be too wet (read: runny), add some more of the starch until it resembles a loose burger patty.

Begin to assemble little eggplant "burgers" with eggplant as the top and bottom bun and about 2 tsp of filling as the burger. As you finish each stack, place on a parchment lined sheet pan. As you assemble, be sure to press the top layer of eggplant to assure that the filling is spread inside as far as it can be without falling out the sides. Once this step is done, refrigerate for 30 minutes. You could refrigerate, covered up to 48 hours before grilling.

Fire up the grill to medium-high. Allow the grill to heat, with the lid closed for 5-10 minutes. On the sheet pan, with a paint brush, pastry brush, or the back of a spoon if you are desperate, spread glaze over the top side of the eggplant cakes. With a long set of tongs, carefully place the cakes onto the grill, glaze side down. Leave some room in between the cakes for easy grabbing later on.

Glaze the now-up-side of the cakes. Close the grill lid. The eggplant should cook for 3-4 minutes on the first side. Open the lid, re-glaze the up-side of the cakes. Carefully turn over each cake individually. Re-glaze the now-up-side of the cakes and close the lid. After about 3 minutes of cooking the second side of the cakes, open the lid and carefully remove the cakes from the grill, placing the cakes in one layer on the sheet pan. Serve along side the extra glaze in a bowl and a heaping, steamy bowl of white rice, y'all.

Ah.