Eggplant in Plum Sauce

Last summer, when we were on our way back from our vacation in Hawaii, we got stranded at the airport for over 5 hours, owing to some snag with our aircraft. We had lunch from the Chinese deli at the airport and this was one of the dishes that we had then.  I enjoyed it so much that I had been trying out various recipes to recreate that taste. Though I came closer, there was something missing in all those. So I had been on the lookout for the authentic recipe for the eggplant dish.
My husband came upon this recipe while searching for something to make for Mother's day, so he surprised me by making this for me today for dinner, as he knew I had been on the lookout for this. This tasted like the one we had that day at Hawaii..
(Now, I realize that the secret ingredient was the Plum sauce.)
This goes well with fried rice.
Source: Martin Yan's Quick and Easy
Ingredients:
Egg plant - 1 lbs, roll cut
Garlic - 3 cloves, chopped
For the sauce:
Plum sauce - 3 tbs (can be substituted with date sauce)
Rice wine - 2 tbs
Sesame oil - 2 tsp
Soy sauce - 1 tsp
Dark say sauce - 1 tsp
Chilli sauce-1 tsp
Method:
To make the sauce, combine all the ingredients and whisk to blend evenly and set it aside.
Deep-fry the egg plant pieces until golden brown, about 3 mts, at 350 degree F. Drain on a paper towel.
Heat a frying pan, add 2 tsp of oil, add the garlic and cook until fragrant (about 20 sec). Now add the egg plant and sauce and bring to a boil. Cook stirring for 1 minute.

A peek into my Mother's day breakfast-in-bed (courtesy my husband and daughter):