Eggplants (Chinese style) 鱼香茄子

Hello (and Happy New Year 2016!),

A couple of days ago, I made Chinese style eggplants. I don't really know what to call them, so let's refer to them as Chinese style eggplants in English. In Chinese, it's called 鱼香茄子 (yú xiāng qiézi). 鱼香 is like 'fish flavoured/aroma'. I didn't search on the web, but I don't really understand why there is 鱼香 in the name, maybe some people use fish sauce, I really have no idea.
The more I 'researched' on the recipe, the more I think it's a pretty flexible dish. Everyone seems to have their own style of cooking them.

The first time I ate them, it was in Taiwan. Here is a picture of the dish:

It tasted salty (but not too much), like chicken broth. It wasn't spicy at all. It was like comfort food. I ate it with rice and the broth (?) is reaaaallyyyy good with the rice. (ﾟヮﾟ)

It is only a couple of months ago that I thought of asking a Taiwanese student what was the name of this dish. She told me it was 鱼香茄子 (I call it Chinese style eggplants). She gave me a recipe she wrote herself in French on how to make them. It was so sweet.
I only tried the recipe during the Christmas holidays since I was home at that time (and I had the kitchen).

Just as I started cutting the eggplant, I discovered eggplants have seeds... (I think I ate eggplants one time in my life, and I don't recall them having seeds at that moment...)

So I checked on the internet if you needed to remove them. I was so hoping to not need to (though as you can see on the picture, I did started to try to remove the seeds by trying a fancy cut on the eggplant, but then I saw there were seeds even near the skin, so I just went to look up on the web cause I didn't want to cut all this for nothing).

And in fact, you don't need to remove them. It would have been kind of a hassle if you had, in my opinion..

Ingredients:

Basil leaves, garlic, jalapeño peppers (didn't put in the seeds thank God), 1 eggplant

Garlic and hot pepper with oil.

Adding the eggplant.

After 3 minutes of cooking/steaming (with pot cover) on medium-heat.

After adding soy sauce, sugar, water and salt.

Final result.

It definitely did not taste like the ones I had eaten in Taiwan. Nonetheless, it was good. If only I had put less jalapeño peppers. I never cook with hot peppers, but when I do...

Also, the recipe called for two eggplants, but I decided to cook just one, because it looked enough. Didn't know eggplants were like spinach and shriveled like crazy.

But because it didn't taste like the eggplants I had eaten in Taiwan, I asked another Chinese person if the dish on the (first) picture was really Chinese style eggplants. He told me yes, and that there were a lot of variations of this dish. Well, in fact, after looking up Chinese style eggplants on the net, I found that each recipe had something different from the other, but all in all, same basic ingredients.

I will of course try other recipes of these eggplants until I find ze one.

See ya :)