Stir-Fried Lamb with Eggplant, Mushrooms, and Leeks

Lamb plays a feature role in only Northern Chinese cooking, where from ancient times it has been cooked with generous amounts of garlic, leeks, ginger, vinegar, and wine—all of these the medicinally and culinarily correct high yang notes to balance the cool, low yin note of the lamb. Pairing the meat with sweet Chinese eggplant is a part of China Moon (as opposed to Chinese) tradition; I find the match to be quite seductive.

This is a wintry dish that makes for a warmi