The Food Site

Amongst the many vegetables, I don’t really like eating brinjals much. I find it too mushy and soft to my liking. Then, my Personal Chef (aka The Food Critic) found a way to cook it that makes it so delicious, I actually love it!

This recipe for stir-fried spicy brinjal is actually my grandmother’s recipe and after tasting it and learning a few tips from her, my Personal Chef started trying his hand at cooking it. Well, if anything, he aced it. So, this recipe today is partly my Personal Chef’s recipe and partly mine as I try to emulate his style of preparing this particularly simple dish.

So, here’s the recipe for this dish which we usually eat with plain steamed rice. Of course, you can even eat it as it is or as a side dish.

Stir Fried Spicy Brinjal

Ingredients

1 brinjal

3 tbsp dried shrimps, soaked and drained

2 tbsp paprika chili powder

3 tbsp diced garlic

2 tbsp butter (for a healthier option, use olive oil although the flavour would not be as fragrant)

3 tbsp Dark Soy Sauce

2 tbsp Light Soy Sauce

Instructions

2. Heat up the wok.

3. Get your diced garlic and dried shrimps ready.

4. Add the garlic to the butter and sautee.

6. Stir fry the garlic and shrimps mix for a few minutes, then add in the chili powder. Stir and make sure that the shrimps and garlic are well coated with the chili powder. By now, the spicy aroma should be quite strong.

8. Stir fry the brinjals for a while and then add in the sauces.

10. If you prefer it to have a slight crispiness to it, then stir fry for another few minutes more. If not, remove from heat and serve hot.

The shrimps actually gave it a nice salty and aromatic flavour while the butter gave it a richness that you can’t get with olive oil. Of course, the chili powder gave it the spicy tinge. However, I didn’t use a lot of chili as my son could not eat ‘too spicy’ food yet, so that’s why you could hardly see the chili here.

The stir fried spicy brinjal is actually an easy and simple dish to prepare as the whole cooking time takes between 10 to 15 minutes only!

Whenever I cook during the weekends, I always do it in the shortest time possible because I’d usually be alone at home with my toddler. It is not a good idea to spend too much time in the kitchen while watching over a toddler who likes to get up to all sorts of mischief.

So, I usually do a lot of short-cuts in my cooking and one of it is to use the same sauce for two different types of mains and yet come up with absolute different flavours for both of it. Curious? Read on to find out how I do it.

I first use a recipe for BBQ Chicken from here, except that I didn’t exactly follow the whole recipe. Heheh…that’s me, I love to try out new recipes but I somehow never do follow the whole recipe and I tend to change it around.

So, here’s my own version of

Stir-fried Chicken in BBQ sauce

AND

Grilled Lemon & Herbs Salmon

Ingredients for chicken

1/2 chicken, chopped into four pieces (you can also use whole chicken)

2 onions, chopped

1 clove garlic, diced

3 tbsp homemade salsa

2 tbsp ketchup

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp Worchestershire sauce

2 – 3 tbsp mixed fresh herbs (I used basil, thyme, dill and rosemary)

1 capsicum, sliced

Ingredients for salmon

3 tbsp butter

2 tbsp diced garlic

1 lemon

4 tbsp mixed fresh herbs (thyme, dill and rosemary)

1 salmon steak

Instructions

1. Prepare the ingredients for the chicken

6. Set aside the chicken. But don’t wash the wok / frying pan.

10. Turn on the heat of the pan (the same one that was used to stir-fry the sauce for the chicken) and add butter to it.

11. Add garlic and sautee for a few seconds over low heat.

13. Once it turns opaque with a gorgeous ‘tan’ to it, it is cooked so remove from heat.

14. Now back to the chicken. Add about 3 tbsp butter to the same pan and heat it up.

16. Stir fry till the chicken is cooked through, about 10 to 15 minutes. Then, you will get this…

And…

Here’s the

You will find that the salmon has a hint of the BBQ sauce but not much as it has its own lemon and herbs flavour.

I serve these two mains with

and

That’s a complete meal for the three of us. This is all done within an hour (including preparation time). The trick to using the same frying pan (or wok in my case) for the sauce, then the salmon and then the chicken is to keep the heat at medium or medium low so that it won’t burn.

Of course, the mains can be eaten as is or serve with other side dishes but I think the stir fried chicken in BBQ sauce goes very well with rice due to the sauce.