CONTEST ENTRY: WEEK 9- Healthy Game -"The Best Natural Recipe For Feeding The Brain" | WOK WITH ME: Sauteed Eggplant -Filipino Style Recipe | HOW DOES IT HELPFUL FOR THE BRAIN?
Greetings everyone! Tonight, I'll give you a feast for the eyes with our simple yet delicious and healthy dinner followed by step-by-step procedure on how to cook it and its basic benefits in health.
These days of pandemic, we've learned and explored a lot of things. We even collected different kinds of flowers/plants as it became popular during the lockdown. For some, they made their own vegetable garden that once they dreamt of and one of them is my mom's co-teacher!
After few weeks of waiting from vegetable planting, their eggplants is now ready to harvest and can be finally eaten. Since they harvested a peck, they decided to give it to her co-teachers (including my mom) instead of waiting for it to get rotten.
I got amazed by its size, honestly! It was my first time to see an eggplant this big. But no doubts because it's a different variety compared to other eggplants we mostly eat. This is different from the violet-colored one by the way.
Enough for chit-chat because it's dinner time!
INGREDIENTS (quantity is based from my recipe):
- eggplant (10 pcs.)
- oil (4 tbs.)
- onion (1 pc.)
- garlic (4 cloves)
- red bell pepper (1pc.)
- ripe tomato (1 pc.)
- salt and pepper (to taste)
- oyster sauce (to taste)
- brown sugar (to taste)
STEP-BY-STEP PROCEDURE IN COOKING SAUTEED EGGPLANT:
- To start, clean and wash the ingredients thoroughly. When ready, rightly slice the ingredients.
In slicing eggplant, remove its stem first before slicing it quarterly.
When done, soak it in the water so it won't get darken/dried easily.
Next, continue on slicing the other ingredients (onion, garlic, red bell pepper and tomato).
If you have any left over meat, the better! -I have fried fish.
- When everything is ready, put the wok in medium heat.
I'm using Filipino's traditional wok. This wok is over 50 years old and it's so hard for us to let it go because it's from my late grandma. It's very convenient to use as well maybe I'm used to it since when I was a kid, this has been the only all-purpose cooking utensil for us. :)
Then, pour exact amount of oil.
When hot, add garlic.
Followed with onion.
Then tomato.
Add meat (fish).
After adding other ingredients, saute it together with the sliced eggplants.
Add enough oyster sauce and cup of water. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste then sugar (as we, Filipinos love salty and a little sweet of taste in any kind of dishes).
Saute for 2 minutes.
Add bell pepper.
Afterwards, cover the wok and saute for about 8-10 minutes until become tender (depends on the hardness/softness of your eggplant).
You can add more water if it dried up then wait until boiled.
Lastly, give a stir, taste and judge!
Deliciously done!
Now that I'm done sharing my recipe, let us talk about the one of the basic benefits of eating eggplants.
Eggplant has been known for its wonderful benefits for being rich in Vit. C, K, B6, thiamin, niacin, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, dietary fiber, folic acid, potassium, and manganese. Not only that! It is also good for the brain and or mental health as Eggplants are very rich in copper which is an another essential component of red blood cells just like iron.
As what I have learned, a person who has deficiency in iron could be in very dangerous health because it can manifest in anemia. And for you to know, anemia is characterized by headaches, migraines, fatigue, weakness, depression, and cognitive malfunction.
Talking about cognitive malfunction is a subject about oyour brain or mental health. By eating eggplants regularly, it will help you to boost our cognitive activities and will keep your body and brain safe from toxins or diseases. And they not only ddo tht, they also increase blood flow to the brain which will deliver more oxygen-rich blood to your brain and stimulate neural pathways to develop. By boosting the powers of memory and analytic thought, the potassium in eggplants will also act as vasodilator and brain booste so overall the vegetables, eggplants should be called the BRAIN FOOD!
Getting ready for dinner! Hope you like and enjoy my shared recipe everyone. If you find this as valuable post, I will be glad to hear it from you. ;)
HAPPY STEEMING!
