Special Jason Phu Eggplant, Oyster Mushroom and Fig in Fishsauce with Yummy Honey Steak on a bed of rice with a Sunny Side Up Egg or SJPEOMAFIFWYHSOABORWASSUE Recipe

Special Jason Phu Eggplant, Oyster Mushroom and Fig in Fishsauce with Yummy Honey Steak on a bed of rice with a Sunny Side Up Egg or SJPEOMAFIFWYHSOABORWASSUE

Ingredients

-A steak, any meat is fine, I’m using a lovely eye fillet from The Food Farm, I couldn’t find a bit of pork jowl, also kangaroo works great as well, if you don’t eat meat then a nice big portabella mushroom or a nice slab of tofu will also work
-An egg, or two, or three, any of the beautiful eggs from The Food Farm
-A bunch of eggplant (or whatever the collective name for them is, probably a whollop), or one big whollop of an eggplant
-Oyster mushrooms, I got a bunch from The Fungi
-Delicious figs from Figlicious
-Bottle fish sauce, I like the one with the squid on it, but everyone likes something different, there are vegan options as well. Growing up what we would call fish sauce in our household is actually dipping sauce or nước chấm, so I’ll differentiate it with bottle fish sauce and fish sauce
-Oyster sauce, the one with the panda on it is the best one
-Soy sauce
-Butter
-Pepper
-Garlic
-Sesame seeds
-Chilli
-Ingredients I forgot like sugar and some oil, oh, and honey, and an onion, maybe some shallots and peanuts

Some nonsense:

There aren’t any exact ingredients because whenever my parents taught me how to cook they refused to give me measurements (the measurement system was a “bunch of dollops”) and they insisted I taste as I go. Also this is a great excuse for me forgetting how much I put in to this recipe because I just made it up on the day. If you would like to just cook something similar with much better directions I would recommend looking up my inspirations to this recipe, Vietnamese Broken Rice with Grilled Lemongrass Porkchops (CƠM TẤM SƯỜN NƯỚNG) and Grilled Eggplant with Scallion Oil (CÀ TÍM NƯỚNG MỠ HÀNH), otherwise read on to my nonsense recipe.

Recipe

I marinate my steak with honey, oyster sauce, oil (I like olive oil but Dad likes his own shallot oil he makes), crushed garlic, chilli, pepper, bottle fish sauce. I feel like you could add a star anise or some Sichuan peppercorns, but I’ve never tried that, someone try and let me know. Let this marinate, a chef skill most of us are capable of. If you want to make your own shallot oil, you just finely dice onions and then cook ‘em up in a pot of oil ‘til they go dark brown, or the lazy cheat method is using dried shallots in oil instead.

Punch a few holes in your eggplant and stick it in the oven while you’re making everything else, do 250 degrees each side for 15minutes (+10minutes letting it rest inside the oven turned off). Don’t ask me what setting it is in the oven, the one with the fan going and the light on, the symbol looks like three baguettes next to each other. Or three whollops of baguettes.

What we call fish sauce in our household is: 1 part sugar, 1 part bottle fish sauce, 1 part vinegar (I like to use apple cider), and 2 parts water, boil it up dissolving the sugar and then throw your finely chopped garlic and chilli in after you turn the heat off. I find it tastes different every time I make it, so make sure you’re tasting and adjusting. Many recipes you’ll see use lime juice, but we’ve just never done it that way, sometimes the idea of authentic is gobblywobbly (key word: sometimes), what’s important is you make it to how you enjoy it, and the memories formed around eating that recipe with your loved ones far outlives the taste of it, go on, add a dollop of mayonnaise to it, no one’s watching. Unless you start a food truck chain with this recipe, I would not recommend doing that, blasphemy. How much of this do you make? Lots, it doesn’t hurt to have a jar of it in the fridge. If you are worried about the authenticity of it, then the authentic thing is to always make more of everything for surprise guests and hidden large appetites, people should always leave your household with a full belly.

This is the weird part of the recipe that Dad wants no part of. I pan fry the oyster mushrooms and figs in soy sauce, butter and a bit of honey until golden brown, but also, a reason why my parents encouraged cooking by feel (dollops), sometimes you don’t have all the perfect ingredients for a recipe, so you got to improvise (shout out to all the busy parents out there making carrot mayonnaise sandwiches).

Now back to my Dad’s recipe: I take the eggplant out of the oven, peel it, dice it in long fat worm like strips (a technical term used by chefs). I plate up the eggplant, and figs and like to layer the oyster mushrooms around the plate like a blooming flower, sometimes making something look pretty can trump your terrible cooking skills, does not always work. Pour the fish sauce mixture on and generously sprinkle on fresh finely chopped chilli, garlic, sesame seeds and crushed peanuts (I actually only had macadamias on the day so used that, tasted alright, much like the mayonnaise you put in your fish sauce).

Pan fry up your steak how you like it, leave the juice and marinate gunk (technical term) in the pan and fry up your eggs in it. Plate these up on a bed of rice. And there you have it, a traditional SJPEOMAFIFWYHSOABORWASSUE dish.

Jason Phu is currently one of the exhibiting artists as part of The National 4 at Carriageworks. Visit the exhibition until Sun 25 Jun 2023.

Pick up these ingredients from Carriageworks Farmers Market and try the recipe for yourself! We’re open every Saturday from 8am – 1pm.