This is one of my favorite vegetarian Chinese dishes. It's a simple dish but pacs a LOT of flavor.
One of my favorite dishes in China is called Di San Xian (Three Treasures of the Earth). The main ingredients are eggplant, potatoes and green bell peppers. It sounds absurdly simple and, depending on your opinion of these vegetables, potentially quite boring or plain. I assure you that this dish is anything but boring and bland. I have had to practically force feed this dish to several people upon their first visit to China because they had an aversion to eggplant. After their first bite, they were hooked. It's just THAT good. Look at it! It's a thing of beauty!
This dish is north eastern Chinese cuisine (Chinese: dongbei cai 东北菜). Yantai has a plethora of north eastern Chinese dishes and has resulted in me having affinity for it. Perhaps this dish was the first one that won me over to the dishes from that part of the country. Their dishes tend to have more of the longer lasting vegetables or pickled vegetables. This is a result of the extreme cold in that part of that world. Many generations ago the locals had to work smarter, not harder, to preserve their food so that they could survive the frigid winters in which no fresh food was accessible.
I struggle to adequately describe the flavors of this dish as I cannot think of any American food that it is even remotely similar to in flavor. The ingredients are all stir fried and have a wonderful garlic flavor. The sauce is to die for - you will be compelled to try to eat it all by taking bite after bite of it with rice.
In America, I often crave this dish. Unfortunately, most authentic Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel area are NOT north eastern cuisine. This has led me on many long days of looking at Chinese restaurant menus throughout the area. And guess what! I found just the place that ONLY serves this most amazing cuisine! It recently has changed locations by a matter of a few storefronts and I have as of yet had a chance to check it out and confirm all of the dishes are as authentic as before, but from the Yelp reviews I have a lot of confidence in it being authentic. If you are interested in the food from this part of the world, please do check out Shenyang Tasty Restaurant (127 S. San Gabriel Blvd, San Gabriel CA 91776 - https://www.yelp.com/biz/shenyang-tasty-restaurant-san-gabriel-2?osq=shenyang+restaurant ) and don't hesitate to invite me to tag along so that I can recommend all of the best dishes there. Although they do serve Di San Xian, they have slightly tweaked their recipe to also include tomatoes so it is not entirely accurate - nonetheless, it is extremely delicious and has accurate flavors.
I highly recommend that you attempt making this dish according to the below recipe. It's definitely worth the time and effort.
Disclaimer: Only the thoughts in this blog are my own. The preceding is not my own recipe and the pictures are not my own. You can find the original source at China Sichuan Food https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/di-san-xian-chinese-sauteed-potato-eggplants-and-green-peppers/ )
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