This vegan eggplant dish, flavored with soy sauce, mirin and a touch of brown sugar, is a very popular home cooking dish in Japan. When chef and cookbook author Atsuko Ikeda makes it, she steams the eggplants whole to retain their moisture and flavor.
The recipe, featured in her new cookbook, “Otsumami: Japanese Small Bites & Appetizers: Over 70 Recipes to Enjoy with Drinks” (Ryland Peters & Small, $28), calls for grinding sesame seeds to a paste to bind the sauce. A food processor gets the job done just fine. Serve it with your favorite vegetarian sushi rolls.
Eggplant with Sesame Soy Sauce
Serves 4
INGREDIENTS
2 eggplants
1 ounce toasted white sesame seeds
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons mirin
1 teaspoon light brown soft sugar
1 teaspoon chile oil
1 teaspoon peeled and finely grated fresh ginger
Pinch of fresh chives, finely chopped
DIRECTIONS
Peel the skins off the eggplants but leave the stalks on for now (they can be removed easily when cooked).
Bring enough water — enough to cover the eggplants by about a third — to a boil in a large saucepan. Place the whole eggplants in the pan, cover with a lid and let them steam for 15 minutes, turning once halfway through.
Meanwhile, to make the sesame soy sauce, grind the toasted white sesame seeds to a grainy paste in a food processor, spice grinder or traditional Japanese tool called a suribachi. Put the ground sesame seeds in a bowl with the toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, mirin and brown sugar. Stir together and set aside.
Once the eggplants are cooked, remove them from the pan and leave to cool, until you can easily handle them. Tear the eggplants apart lengthwise with your fingers into pieces; remove and discard the stems. Place in a serving dish, then stir the sesame soy sauce again and spoon it over the eggplants to dress.
Serve the eggplants slightly warm or keep in the fridge and serve chilled when you are ready – both ways work. Just before serving, drizzle with Chile oil and scatter over the grated ginger and chopped chives.
— From “Otsumami: Japanese Small Bites & Appetizers: Over 70 Recipes to Enjoy with Drinks” by Atsuko Ikeda (Ryland Peters & Small, $28)
