Stir fry a la Jing

My family doesn't usually eat eggplant. But this version by Jing will be a sure hit at home as well.

Ingredients
1 eggplant
0.25 pound lean ground beef
0.5 tbsp Chinese cooking wine
3-4 tbsp soy sauce
0.5 tbsp starch
0.25 tsp ground ginger
0.25 tsp ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp chili bean paste

Preparation
Mix the ground beef with 2 tbsp soy sauce, the starch, cooking wine, ginger and black pepper. Set aside.

Wash the eggplant and cut off its top. You can also peel off some of the skin. Slice into circles about 0.5 inch thick, then cut the circles into 0.5 inch thick strips. Soak in very lightly salted water for 20 minutes.

Clean and mince the garlic cloves.

After the 20 minutes have passed, preheat a large skillet with the vegetable oil. Add the garlic and allow to sizzle until fragrant. Then add the drained eggplant and fry on high heat, stirring constantly until lightly browned and cooked.

Add the meat and the rest of the soy sauce. Allow the meat to cook in one corner, before chopping it into smaller bits. We don't want the ground meat to disintegrate into small bits.

Cook until the beef is done, adding a little bit of water if necessary. Then stir in the chili bean paste. Serve with steamed white rice.