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 Post subject: While we're charring things ...
PostPosted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 10:58 pm 
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Location: Portland, OR
... I made some Nasu Dengaku this evening to go with our panopoly of Japanese food (sushi, miso, cucumber salad, seaweed salad, etc.). I couldn't find a recipe I quite liked out of 2 cookbooks and 3 food blogs, so here's my synthetic recipe:

Sauce:

2 tbs Mirin
2 tbs Sake
2 tbs water
2 heaping tbs sugar
3 to 4 tbs akamiso ("red" miso)*

Eggplant:

2-3 tbs sesame oil
4 Japanese eggplants

Mix all the sauce ingredients except the miso in a very small saucepan. Heat to boiling and boil for about two minutes. Stir in the miso, breaking it up with a chopstick or whisk, until dissolved and it comes to a boil again. Simmer for 1 minute, then take off heat.

Line a large rimmed baking sheet with foil. Trim the stem tops off the eggplant, then slice in half lengthwise. Score the flesh of each eggplant with the tip of a knife in a diamond pattern. Brush the sesame oil on the cut surface of the eggplant and place face up on the foil sheet.

Broil the eggplant about 3" away from the flame/element, until browned. Spoon a thin layer of miso sauce over the surface of each eggplant; you should use almost all the sauce. Place back under the broiler and broil for 3-4 minutes, until bubbling and burning in spots.

Serve while still warm. Goes well with rice, sushi, and Japanese beer.

(* actually, this will work with pretty much any miso, including shiro miso (sweet or white miso). I'm considering trying it with some mame miso (very dark brown, chocolate miso))

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 Post subject: Re: While we're charring things ...
PostPosted: Mon Aug 05, 2013 10:29 pm 
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Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2012 1:51 am
Posts: 121
AMAZING!

I was reading your procedure going . . . yep, that's right, u-huh, NEAT!
I haven't had this dish in decades, mom used to make it using little eggplants from our garden. Big "store bought" ones were too think and didn't cook through. I think the smaller Japanese eggplants are the correct ingredient and the idea is to "toast" them on the fired grill (read below). She'd broil them like you mentioned and to your credit, everything you listed is just like what she did, except the red miso. I think she did shiro instead. It was a kind of sweet and the meat of the eggplant became mushy, almost a custard. Fun taste and fun texture.

When mom and I were venturing by ourselves "somewhere" in Japan, we came across a man yelling to come to his grill. It was outdoors and he basically had a rock fire pit behind him and we sat at some big stones as little tables around him. This eggplant with miso sauce was one of his items. He had a chicken wire basket he put "stuff" in - usually fish, but when we sat at his "stones" he was doing Japanese eggplant with sauce. Toasted, almost charred on semi-teriaki-miso sauce, over hot wood fire. We had things that I peasants from 1000 years ago would eat. Grass-hoppers, wild onions, frog legs, big thick worms the size of your pinkie finger - all fire toasted and slathered in sauce. He'd pass you some food on the end of a wooden stick and SCREAM AT YOU: 'Hai Dozo!" Scared the crap out of me the first time, it got funny as you got used to it.
Another was whole sparrow (yep - little birds, plucked naked) on a skewer, fire toasted and slopped with sauce. The birds were not cleaned so I didn't care for the lower portion of the guts, but the wings and head were fun because they were really crunchy.

I never knew it was called "Nasu Dengaku". Something new to me.
Mom passed away in 1984 and I haven't had it since. Awful, huh?
THANKS for taking me down memory lane!

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 Post subject: Re: While we're charring things ...
PostPosted: Mon Aug 05, 2013 11:15 pm 
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Joined: Thu Dec 18, 2008 1:03 am
Posts: 5280
Location: Portland, OR
And thanks for the story, Tunaroe!

Sparrows? Worms? Really?

I think this is a side of Japanese cooking I'd rather not be exposed to.

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