Happy Island is really called Pu Ti Island. I went there with some buddies to watch birds and we stayed in a little hut overlooking the mud-flats and ate in an enormous empty restaurant with an empty disco attached. It was a surreal experience but one that I enjoyed immensely. I learned a lot of new things and not just about cooking. Did you know that wood-lice make a very loud crunching sound considering their size? They kept me awake the first night but once I'd spotted one with the aid of a torch, chomping away right next to my head, and established that they were tiny wee harmless things, I just ignored them. Not so the giant spiders and snakes however. I gave them as wide a berth as possible.
The food in the restaurant was okay...just. It took a few days to get the kitchen staff to understand the idea of vegetarianism and for the first few days I subsisted on sweetcorn and fried peanuts - even the rice had egg in it. I eventually called a Chinese friend in Beidaihe, a couple of hundred km up the road and told her the problem. I passed the phone to the chef and my friend explained the situation then told me everything was sorted. The next day it was. There was no egg in the rice and there were at least two veggie dishes at every meal from then on. This was by far the best one.
I saw a lot of birds on Happy Island and many of the most interesting ones were skulking in the kitchen vegetable garden so I explored this area daily. Through my adherence to this routine, I discovered two interesting facts, one of which made me happy and one of which made me sad. The good thing was that after a few visits to the garden, I realised that almost everything we were eating was home-grown. I began to predict with some accuracy what would be on the table on a particular day according to the ripeness of the crops. This developing skill, however, led to the sad discovery one day that the last two or three aubergines had reached their peak and the subsequent acknowledgement that this would entail the final serving of delicious 'Happy-Island eggplants' as we had begun to affectionately refer to them. The chef had his aubergine recipe down to an art, but I managed to produce something similar at home which was, although a rough approximation of the original, nevertheless surprisingly tasty and I would like to share my recipe. This is how you do it....
Ingredients
500g aubergines
2 level dessertspoons of flour
3 cloves of garlic
A small piece of peeled root ginger
1 teaspoon of tomato paste
2 or 3 teaspoons of soy sauce
1 level teaspoon of sugar
1 glass of water (about 120-130g)
Vegetable oil
First you have to peel and salt the aubergines. I recommend
peeling them as fast as possible so they don't turn brown in the air. Once
they have been sprinkled with salt there's no problem. Cut the peeled aubergines
into fairly large chunks. Slice small fruits in half down the middle and
larger fruits in quarters. Chop the resulting pieces into 5 or 6 cm lengths.
Put
the pieces in a bowl and sprinkle liberally with salt to draw out excess
water. Now you have to leave the aubergines for about 45 minutes so there's
ample time to prepare the other ingredients, stick on some rice to boil and
even knock up another dish or two.
Prepare the other ingredients by chopping the ginger and garlic finely and stirring the soy sauce, tomato paste and sugar into a glass of water. Sprinkle the flour evenly on a plate ready for coating the aubergine pieces.
Rinse the aubergines well and shake them dry in a sieve or collander and leave for a few minutes to dry further. Put some oil in a pan and heat, then take a few pieces of aubergine at a time and coat them with flour. Drop the pieces into hot oil and fry, occasionally stirring gently, for about 8 to 10 minutes. Add the chopped ginger and garlic after 4 or 5 minutes.
Pour the glass of water containing the soy sauce etc. into the pan, stir and cook for a further 8 minutes or so.
Serve with boiled rice and maybe tofu and spinach or chilli potatoes.
