Chinese recipe: tomato eggplant stew

I love eggplants but unfortunately neither US or Australia has the right type we have in China, the nicely rounded type. Of course shape is only one thing but what is more important is the taste. The Chinese ones tend not to be bitter at all (unless it is really old). I still remember how awful my dish tasted like when I used American eggpants for the 1st time...I ended up throwing away the whole thing.

Another testimony is from my PhD supervisor. He is an American. We were in China a couple of times together for conferences. There were two types of Chinese food he never seemed to have enough: Peking duck and everything cooked with eggplants.

This is pretty much the one dish I'd like to cook with non-Chinese eggplants. The sweet and sour flavor makes eggplants less bitter. By the way, I learned this dish from my stepfather though I don't think he can recognize it anymore :)

Ingredients (net weight)

eggplants 800g
tomato 380g
garlic 50 g (I like to add a lot of garlic)
Sugar 1 table spoon
Salt to taste
Cooking oil: 3 table spoons (eggplants like to absorb oil, so no matter how much you add, it will disappear fast)
Cilantro: 10 g
Sesame oil: optional

To prepare:

1. Cut garlic, tomato, cilantro into small pieces. Both garlic and tomato will be cooked to shapeless in the end so it doesn't matter how you cut them.
2. Cut eggplants in slices/cubes/sticks, whichever shape you like. Of course the bigger the pieces are, the longer it takes to cook. It is my "slice day" today. Normally that will take forever to cook, but I took a short cut. I microwaved the sliced eggplants for a while (3 minutes?) first.

To cook:

1. Put cooking oil into a well-heated pan. Then throw in garlic. When you smell the garlic scent, put eggplant slices in. Stir. Turn the heat down.
2. Keep stirring until eggplants begin to "sweat", i.e. there is liquid coming out of it. Turn the heat up.
3. Throw in tomatoes and sugar. Keep stirring until tomato skins start to be off.
4. Add salt, a bit more garlic if you like, cilantro and several drops of sesame oil if you wish.

Tips:

1. Eggplants only cooked well enough when it starts sweating. That is the point where I added tomatoes. Before that point I don't think eggplants are ready to absorb tomato juice.

2. This dish is still good if eating as leftovers. Also another good thing about this dish is that it goes well with both Chinese food and Western food. I used its leftover as pasta sauce.