Marinated Eggplants(Nasu) & Nasu Dengaku

Nasu is common vegetable in Japan, many ways to cook and eat.

It is not so easy to find Japanese eggplants here, it's easy to find western eggplants so I use often western eggplants.  It is good, just bit harder and much bigger than Japanese one.

I made this Italian dish.  Marinated with sun dried tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and a bit red pepper.
Cut eggplants thin and grill it on a grill pan with a 1 tsp olive oil.  Put grilled eggplants on the plate and put marinated sauce on top.  I cut basil leaves and sprinkle on it.

The other one is Japanese dish called Miso Dengaku.  This is my husband's favourite dish.  You can find it in a casual Japanese restaurant or tapas (Izakaya) in Japan. He asked me if I can make it or not so I tried it.

It is also western eggplants and cut thicker.  Soak in the water few minutes and dry it out then wrap each of them and cook 4 minutes in microwave.  While it is in microwave, make Dengaku sauce.

Just mix 2tsp Miso, 1tsp Mirin, 0.5 tsp Sake, 1 tsp Sugar.  When eggplants done, take out from microwave and spread the miso sauce on the nasu.  Put them into a oven toaster and just toast.  Take it out and sprinkle grated white sesame on top.
Japanese Nasu skin is very soft so you can eat it, but western nasu skin is hard so you can serve with spoon and scoop inside of nasu.  It is melting in your mouth.  Even though you don't like eggplants, you must try this, it is totally delicious!!  Of course, my husband liked it a lot as well as my kids who usually don't eat eggplants:)