Saucy Braised Eggplant and Tofu
A simple, weeknight dish built around sweet flour sauce
During my first years in Germany, I hardly cooked eggplant at home. I’ve never been much of a fan of the globe eggplant, something about the idea that it takes forever to cook and drinks oil like water. That changed when my local supermarket started stocking long, tender Japanese eggplants. At first, they appeared only occasionally; now they show up reliably and have become part of my regular cooking rotation (REWE, please always stock them), for example, in this fish-fragrant eggplant, or steamed then tossed with charred pepper sauce.
Usually, that means cooking with them once or twice a month. But this summer, while working on two commissioned eggplant recipes, I went through at least ten bags of Japanese eggplants in August and September alone. To my surprise, I never tired of them. The other day, I grabbed another bag almost unconsciously, and when I got home, I wanted something different.
What else can I make with eggplant?
I turned to my old Sichuan cookbooks and landed on “jiangshao qiezi” (酱烧茄子), or sauce-braised eggplant, from my favorite, Popular Sichuan Cooking (大众川菜). I’ve flipped through it so much that it’s now falling apart.
The “sauce” (jiang) in the name doesn’t refer to any sauce, but to a specific seasoning: tianmianjiang. You may know it as the glossy, dark condiment tucked into Peking duck wraps.
Tianmianjiang (甜面酱), also known as tianjiang (甜酱), is a deep brown, thick sauce with a savory-sweet flavor. Traditionally, it’s made by steaming a flour-and-water mixture, inoculating it with a rice-koji mold, and fermenting it with salted water (as shown in this video clip). Some brands include soybeans, which is why it’s sometimes translated as “sweet bean sauce.” The naming can get confusing, but don’t mistake it for soybean paste (黄豆酱), which is lighter in color, grainier, and tastes different. However, brands often produce both and package them in very similar-looking jars.
Though common in northern Chinese kitchens, especially for pickled cucumbers ( jianggua, 酱瓜) and Beijing fried sauce noodles (zhajiangmian, 炸酱面), you’ll also find tianmianjiang in Sichuan cooking. The slight sweetness in twice-fried pork? That’s tianmianjiang working its magic, and it does the same in this chicken yacai stir-fry. When I was a kid and spice-averse, my family often ordered a sticky, savory stir-fry pork called jingjiang rousi (京酱肉丝), another dish highlighting its flavor and sticky texture.
It also makes a wonderfully rich braising sauce for eggplant, bamboo shoots, and tofu, forming a category of dish called jiang shao (sauce-braised, 酱烧). So I thought: why not bring eggplant and tofu together in the same flavor base, with ingredients you can find almost anywhere, in under half an hour? Both absorb sauce beautifully. If you’ve made my home-style tofu before, think of this as a milder, non-spicy alternative to doubanjiang. The tofu also makes it substantial enough to stand alone with rice.
Saucy Braised Eggplant and Tofu | 酱烧茄子豆腐 (Jiàngshāo Qiézi Dòufu)
Serves 2
