Warm Chinese Eggplant Salad With Citrus Peanut Vinaigrette

So, here’s the thing. I have been trying to lose some weight and honestly, I hate it.

All I want to do is go crush some Taco Bell breakfast and make bread and pasta. That said, the benefit of me trying to eat healthy is I get back to the basics and start messing around with different flavor types of produce and flavor profiles.

I saw some nice looking eggplant at the grocery store yesterday and grabbed a big one. Trying to figure out dinner tonight, I decided Asian flavors were calling my name.

Here is the result of my endeavor. If you don’t like the idea of this salad as a whole, trust me you should try the citrus peanut vinaigrette. It’s ridiculous if I do say so myself.  The other great thing is if you were a vegetarian, you could make this as such, but I love me some spicy sausage!

The recipe here yields enough for 2-3 large portions, or 6-8 small portions.

Enjoy!

Ingredients

• 1 Large Eggplant, diced
• 1 sweet onion, sliced
• 1 cup white mushrooms, sliced (substitute better ‘shrooms if you want. I just had these on hand.)
• 1 link Andouille sausage
• 1 link Chorizo
• 2 Tbsp Chines Five Spice
• 1 Tbsp Ginger Powder
• 1/4 cup cucumber, sliced into small sticks
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive Oil

For The Citrus Peanut Vinaigrette

• 1/3 cup natural peanut butter (creamy or chunky, it’s up to you!)
• 1/3 cup of orange juice
• juice and zest of one lime
• 1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
• 1 Tbsp Sriracha
• 2 cloves garlic, minced

(I didn’t have scallions on hand, but if you wanted they would be a great addition!)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Coat eggplant cubes with enough olive oil to coat. Add Chinese Five Spice and Ginger Powder. Season with salt & pepper to taste. Spread on greased (oil or cooking spray) baking sheet and place in the oven until golden brown and tender.
3. Mix together all ingredients for the Citrus Peanut Vinaigrette until a smooth, dressing-like consistency. Set aside in refrigerator.
4. Sweat onions (season with salt & pepper to taste) in sauté pan with olive oil until translucent. Set aside.
5. Saute Mushrooms (season with salt & pepper to taste) in pan used for onions until soft and delicious. When they’re done, you should know. Drain any excess liquid and set aside.
6. Remove both sausage links from casing and crumble into the same pan with just a touch of oil. Chorizo may caramelize much faster than Andouille, so you may want to time things.
7. Once sausage and eggplant are finished (this should matchup pretty well if you time things right), assemble salad int this order: Eggplant, onions, mushrooms, a bit more onion, sausage. Garnish with cucumber.
8. The salad is ready and now you just need to add Citrus Peanut Vinaigrette over the top. If you want, just mix everything together, but don’t overdress the veggies. Trust me though, make it look pretty, it will taste better!

Please leave your comments below if you try the recipe and have any feedback!