Sweet Miso Grilled Aubergine

This simple vegan recipe packs so much flavour - you'll never want to cook aubergines any other way. This is a classic Japanese dish known as Nasu Dengaku and it's incredibly easy to make. Serve this with some sticky Japanese rice, spring onions, a few pickles and a sprinkling of Japanese seven spice.

Prep time: 22 mins | Cooking time: 23 minutes (includes time to cook the rice)  

Ingredients for Sweet Miso Grilled Aubergine
Serves 3-4 as a light supper or lunch
3 x aubergine
100g miso paste
2 tablespoons mirin
2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 tablespoon sake (or just water if you don't have any)
2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
Around 50ml of Fussels Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil

To serve
300g Japanese rice
A few toasted sesame seeds
2 spring onions, finely sliced
Beni Shoga - Pickled ginger
Shedletsky's Bread & Butter Pickles

1. Wash the rice in three or four changes of water and leave to soak for 20 minutes.

2. In a bowl, mix together the miso, mirin, caster sugar, sake and rice wine vinegar. Leave to one side

3. Once the rice has soaked, in a saucepan, bring 450ml of water to the boil. Drain the rice from the soaking water and add it to the boiling water. Place a lid on the pan and turn the heat down to it's lowest setting. Cook for 13 minutes, then turn the heat off and leave to a further 10 minutes - don't lift the lid during this whole process.

4. Whilst the rice is cooking, slice the aubergine in half, lengthways (keep the stalk part on). Then make 1cm cuts right through the cut face, at 2 cm intervals on the diagonal - repeat the process at 90° so that you have a criss-cross pattern.

5. At this point, turn on your grill to it's highest setting.

6. Heat a frying pan to a high heat. Add in the cooking oil - you need quite a bit of oil in the pan (roughly ½cm deep) - then place the aubergines into the hot pan and fry for about 5 minutes on each side. You are looking for a lovely golden brown colour on the cut side.

7. Once you've fried the aubergines, remove them from the pan and place in a roasting tin. Pour over the sweet miso sauce, making sure it penetrates right into all the cuts that you made.

8. Now grill the aubergines for around 5 minutes, just on the glazed side. You will see the sweet miso bubbling away and melting into the aubergine, you want to aim for the top to be slightly caramelised.

9. Serve each aubergine on the cooked rice and garnish with toasted sesame seeds, spring onions, the pickles and a little Japanese seven spice.

Let us know what you think foodies. Leave a review for this recipe below and don't forget to tag us @somerset.foodie when you make this at home. Enjoy!

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