Nobu Miso Eggplant

Nobuyuki "Nobu" Matsuhisa is a Japanese celebrity chef and restaurateur known for his unique fusion of tradition Japanese with Peruvian twists. Two of his signature dishes at the popular NOBU restaurants are the miso black cod and miso eggplant. The semi-sweet and super savory miso sauce glaze is marinated on black cod and eggplants then broiled to golden perfection.  I’ve been recently salivate thinking about this dish and wanted to replicate this in our home and luckily recently stumbled on Nobu Matsuhisa’s recipe for his Miso glaze in Food & Wine Magazine (see article/recipe -here-).

In the article they go over how to make Miso Black Cod but since it's used similarly for the eggplants as well I’ve tweaked it a little to bring down the sugar a touch and adapted it for eggplants below. I also tried using two different white miso pastes, the darker almost red miso paste looked closer to what Nobu’s dish looks like (see last photo with black background that used a red miso paste). I’m also sure if I kept original sugar content the white miso would have caramelized even darker but I prefer the darker look w/out all the sugar!

PS: The eggplant below is also semi-deep fried but you can totally also alter to completely roast and broil the eggplants rather than the deep fried method below for a healthier alternative.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 medium to large eggplants (cut into halves, or cut into 3 slices if they are really large eggplants)

• 3 tablespoons Mirin

• 4 tablespoons sake

• 1/2 cup white miso paste (I used red because I like the richer & darker color)

• 3 tbs white sugar (the original recipe used 1/3 cup sugar, so feel free to use more like the original)

• 2 scallion bunches sliced thin

• white sesame seeds (and/or black sesame seeds)

• Cooking/Vegetable oil: I used Light EVO oil instead (original recipe used vegetable oil but I try not using it personally and it EVO worked out great, just don’t set it too high because olive oil has a lower burning/smoke temperature than regular vegetable oil)

PREPARATION

1. In a small saucepan, bring mirin and sake to a boil then whisk in the miso until dissolved. Add sugar and cook over medium heat and whisk/mix until sugar is well mixed/dissolved. Remove from heat and set aside.

2. Cut eggplant in half or if it’s really big, cut into 3 long slices and score the inside flesh of each eggplant half with a knife. Score eggplant, create a criss-cross pattern and be sure not to score through the other side of the eggplant.

3. Heat large pan with a little more oil needed to gloss the entire base of the pan, about 1/4” deep of oil to pan. Set to medium high heat until oil is very glossy and sizzles if you put a sesame seed or chopstick top in (you basically want it hot enough to deep fry).

4. Place eggplants in pan, skin side up, and fry for about 2 minutes (so that the bottoms are slightly browned and softens up a bit). Flip eggplant sides and fry meat side down for 1 1/2 min to 2 min for the other side (enough that it's almost cooked through, and meat side is slightly browned as well), remove from heat.

5. Set your oven to broil (if it has a low, med, high setting use low or medium broil). Set a shelf from 2nd to top shelf in oven if your broiler is on the top of your stove.

6. Skin side down, transfer eggplants onto a foil lined baking sheet (at this point your eggplants should be pretty much cooked through and all we’re going to do is sauce them up and put a slight broil to caramelize the tops).

See steps 7-9 below photo to continue:

7. Spread about 1 tablespoon or so of your miso paste and coat the top layer of the eggplants.

8. Broil for about 2-4 minutes. The glaze on top should be bubbling and slightly caramelized (Mine were done in about 2 min on broiler set to low on second to top shelf in oven)

9. Remove eggplant from heat and transfer onto serving dish and garnish with with white/black sesame seeds, and scallions.