Pork Toast, Pork-Stuffed Tofu Puffs, Eggplant, and Red Peppers

When we tried to recreate the breaded shrimp ball mince, it tasted more like fish than shrimp. Mom and I tweaked the ratios between ground pork (and extra pork fat), shrimp, and fish paste from 1.5:1:1 to 3:1:1. We unfortunately didn’t have any more shrimp to add.

The mince was seasoned with ginger, less garlic, and more sesame oil. Instead of steaming the stuffed tofu, they were shallow fried in vegetable oil.

I really liked the flavour of the stuffed tofu. The pork mince was bouncy and juicy from all the fat in the ground pork. The shrimp added a little sweetness to the mix, while the fish paste rounded out the flavour with another savoury dimension. The porky concoction tasted more like a dim sum item.

When all of the tofu puffs were used up, Mom looked around the kitchen for other things to use. One of the things she used was some sandwich bread. Have you heard of shrimp toast? Well, this is pork toast – super greasy pork toast. The bread was saturated with so much grease that I could’ve taken one pork toast, squeezed out all the oil, and then used the oil to cook up a batch of pot stickers. Are the shrimp toasts during dim sum this greasy? No, eh? I preferred the stuffed tofu puffs over the pork toast.

Another thing Mom brought was a red pepper. She cut the red peppers up in large chunks and then stuffed it with the pork-shrimp-fish mince. Jimmy said that the red peppers were bitter.

The last thing Mom found in the fridge was an eggplant. The eggplant was sliced, topped with the mince and then fried. The eggplant was a bit soggy, but at least they weren’t saturated with grease. They weren’t bad at all.

All in all, I'd say this batch was a success. They tasted more pleasant than the last batch that tasted fishy.