I love variety of vegetables, but I do have favorites.
Eggplant is one of the vegetables that I really enjoy, and whenever I see a dish made with eggplant on a restaurant menu, I almost always order it.
(Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen very often. Apparently not many restaurants serve eggplant dishes…)
I was lucky to be able to find beautiful fresh eggplant and zucchini at the local farmers market to make this Mapo dish.
The “meat” part of Mapo was made with tempeh and walnuts.
My initial plan was to use only tempeh, but I didn’t have enough, so at the last minute I added walnuts.
This decision was a great one!
I really loved the result.
The texture and the nutty flavor from the walnuts were wonderful.
I don’t always have time, but when I do, I try make my noodles myself.
For this dish I wanted flat and wide noodles, so I kind of needed to make them myself, too.
Absolutely delicious!!
Served with Japanese Shiso basil leaves and chili pepper threads.
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