Methodical Cookbook Project- Miso-Broiled Japanese Eggplant over Noodle Cakes with Walnut Miso Sauce and Wasabi Cream
I finally got a chance to try another recipe from Artful Vegan. Even though the whole point of this project is to make my way sequentially through each and every recipe in the book, I finally decided to skip one after deciding that the primary ingredients are simply not to be found in this part of the country at this time of year. Roasted Baby Artichokes in Moroccan Glaze with Meyer Lemon Aioli will just have to wait. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen baby artichokes at all around here actually. I know I saw some Meyer lemons at Reading Terminal Market once. I guess I could have tried the recipe with regular artichokes and lemon, but decided not to.
Next up was Miso Broiled Japanese Eggplant over Noodle Cakes with Walnut-Miso Sauce and Wasabi Cream. I couldn’t find Japanese eggplant, so I just bought a regular one and cut it into slices. They soaked in a marinade of garlic, ginger, scallions, miso, mirin, and sesame oil, and then broiled.
The noodle cakes were a bit of a failure in my opinion. Maybe I should have used more oil and done more of a deep-frying thing, because they weren’t especially cake-like. The directions said to sautee for 2-3 minutes on each side until light brown and crisp, but that never really happened, and they didn’t hold together very well. I’m sure this was due so some sort of failure on my part, but in the end I would have been happier with just serving the noodles as noodles and not as cakes.
I also tossed some chanterelle mushrooms in with the eggplant to broil, since I had them sitting around. They turned out to be the star of the dish. The eggplant took much longer to broil than the recipe called for, possibly because I didn’t use the right kind of eggplant. It was ok, but I’m not really a huge eggplant fan anyway. The marinade was tasty though and I’d definitely repurpose it for something else. I also added some of the carrot-daikon pickle I made for xmas gifts. The walnut-miso sauce was another winner. The wasabi cream was ok, it just tasted like wasabi and I didn’t think it went that well with the other things. Final verdict- I wouldn’t make this dish again as per the recipe, but I’ll definitely be doing something in the future with the miso marinade and the miso-walnut sauce.
