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One of my favorite Japanese dishes, ever since I first started exploring Japanese cooking, was nasu no miso ni, a simple eggplant dish with miso. As I’ve mentioned before, there are probably as many variations on that dish as there are mothers in Japan.

This is one of mine. Pan-grilled deep-purple mini eggplant, cooked with a little tea seed oil, somehow became magically bright purple after a couple of minutes of heat.

Normally I’d just add mirin, sugar, a bit of dashijiru and miso, but this time I also added a bit of mustard and a splash of vinegar. As the dish simmers, the sauce thickens up and some of it is absorbed by the eggplant.

I’d call this variation nasu no karashi miso ni.

I liked this style… It is a bit like serving konnyaku or tofu with sumiso (also a mustard and vinegar seasoned miso), except warm.  It’s a surprisingly delightful way to bring the flavor out of the eggplant.

Like most versions of nasu no miso ni, it looks best on right after cooking, but the leftovers taste even better after they’ve rested for a night or so in the refrigerator.

I hate reading things like this. Alex, I’m sorry you had to go through all that just to get software which you were obviously excited about. It’s a shame that for whatever reason we couldn’t handle the order online. What makes it worse is that we have some very, very passionate users. One of the […]

This week has been nothing but iPhone news. People are lining up, studying every new tidbit of information, and even building applications for it. All this for a phone that by most accounts is technologically inferior to what we currently have on the market. So why all the buzz and hype? Because the iPhone is […]

Yesterday, I mentioned a spicy nagaimo dish I served with that pretty tofu dish.

Although I tend to respect the traditions of the cuisines I borrow from, I’m not above mixing cuisines from time to time. I just don’t tend to like the excesses of self-conscious fusion cuisine, often created by people who know next to nothing about the food or aesthetics of the countries from which they are borrowing.

I’m no genius in that regard… Although I’m reasonably well-traveled, I tend to rely on classic flavor pairings and a consciousness of the nature and function of my ingredients. While I might do some unconventional things, I don’t really do fusion for the sake of shock or drama. Mostly I’m just adapting available ingredients to my situation (dinner tonight), which is pretty much how Italians figured out how to use the tomato or Koreans figured out how to make use of the chili.

Fortunately, Japanese and Korean ingredients and techniques can often be combined in simple ways without creating a culinary fiasco. It’s not surprising to find some form of kimchi on a Japanese dinner table, for example.

I had some nagaimo, a starchy tuber, also called ma in Korean. Although I’m quite happy just to serve nagaimo with a little nori and soy sauce, I thought it might be nice to make use of the artisan gochujang I picked up in Korea recently. This is a fermented sauce made with Korean chilies, rice, salt, and soybeans

Nagaimo is very sticky, or nebaneba, and the glutinous rice in gochujang also has a kind of sticky quality. I thought it would contribute some natural glutamates (umami) and a modest heat to the nagaimo, so I simply stirred it together with the nagaimo until the sticks were relatively evenly coated. As the nagaimo is stirred, its nebaneba qualities become increasingly apparent: small strands of starch stretch into longer strands.

Because of this, it’s better to serve the nagaimo in a small bowl rather than on a plate. As you eat it, the strands tend to want to stay where they started, and you might find a bit of a trail if you try to pick them up… the edge of the bowl will help head that off, and an individual serving in a little bowl that you can pick up will help minimize any embarrassment that might be caused by spreading your food around the table.

I added a little scallion and toasted sesame seed to provide some simple flavor contrast.

I’m sitting here in front of the TV watching the six o’clock news. Because they show sports last, I keep getting teased with hints of the Sonics’ draft pick and their trade of one of our players. So, rather than waiting a half hour to hear the details, I figured I’d look up the top Sonics blogs on Google. What I found was utterly disappointing.

Neither Supersonicsoul, sonicscentral.com nor Seattle Sonics Blog had anything on who had been drafted or who had been traded. I ended up having to go to ESPN to get all the details.

Way to drop the ball on that one, guys.

I’ve talked about We Are Scientists in the past, but I think the mention bears repeating. They’re awesome and to me they’re one of those bands who’s music and lyrics reflect my life and personality back at me. If you’ve ever wondered what goes on in my mind at times, pay attention as they’re dead on. I’ve also seen them a few times since I last posted, and they’ve yet to disappoint. Go see ‘em. In addition to their music they also have one of the funniest spots on the Web: their advice column. Maybe it hits my sense of humor just right, but…really funny stuff.

Scoble has a post about PR and blogging as a corporate citizen. One of the things I really like about Adobe is how open we are. A lot of our employees have blogs, but it’s also that we’re open with our products. Flex is open source, we’ve been talking about AIR for a LOONG time […]

After over four weeks of relative physical inactivity, I haven’t been feeling particularly healthy, and I’m starting to feel like what little weight I lost on my vacation to Japan and Korea has come back. I thought it would be a good idea to eat a little less oily food for a while, so I went to buy some oborodoufu at a local tofu manufacturer. Of course I went home with that, but then I saw a beautiful block of deep-fried tofu, and couldn’t help but take it home. (Is that weird? I go out and I pick up pretty… groceries. I am not a normal guy).

Of course, that might well have undermined my intention to reduce the fat in my diet this week, but big atsuage aren’t all that bad… since they’re fairly large, most of the oil is in the outer layer, and there’s not nearly as much surface area on a large block of tofu as, say, the smaller cubes more likely for agedashi-doufu.

Contrary to popular belief, tofu doesn’t really absorb flavors very much; unless it’s freeze-dried or frozen, it’s just not that porous, which is why it’s important to get very fresh tofu. You really want the tofu to taste good on its own. However, fried tofu does have little nooks and crannies on the surface that make it easier for flavors to attach to the tofu.

Even so, Japanese cuisine is more about tasting the ingredients, not covering them up. Accordingly, this dish really highlights the tofu and the fresh ingredients it’s made with.

This dish is pretty simple, but it looks elegant and has some nice fresh ingredients. It just requires a little attention to detail.

I slice the tofu block in half, make a hidden incision parallel to the white tofu near the bottom of the block, and cut a rectangle in the interior. It’s important to have a fairly substantial border of flesh to keep the block from collapsing… probably in the 3/8-1/2 inch range (1.5cm) I gently work the inner cube out of the block.

I season some dashijiru with mirin, Japanese soy sauce, salt and sugar to nimono strength, neither very salty nor incredibly bland. I cook shimeji (a kind of mushroom) for a few minutes in the seasoned dashi, and I blanch some matchstick-cut carrots and some snow peas. Once those have been shocked with cold water, I give them a little time with the dashi, as well as the tofu itself.  The tofu can only handle a few minutes before it wants to disintegrate, so I pull it out with a slotted spoon and stuff it with the seasoned shimeji, the carrots, and some kaiware-daikon, or radish sprouts.

The snow peas are placed in the serving dish, I plate the atsuage, and I pour enough of the seasoned broth into the bowl.

It’s just one of several side dishes, and like most Japanese dishes, it’s assari, or just lightly seasoned. It’s mostly about having very fresh tofu, very fresh vegetables, and good quality mushrooms. It can be assembled before everything else is plated, because this type of dish can be presented lukewarm.

It could be served with a little fresh ginger, but that kind of intensity isn’t really necessary for this kind of dish. The kaiware provide just a hint of sharpness that balances out the relatively muted flavors of the dish. The contrast between this and other dishes in the same meal make having really big, bold flavors here unnecessary: my umeboshi, sunomono, an aemono, and a spicy nagaimo dish I served with it provide balance.

Wow. This is really, really cool. Nice work Mike and co.

This morning on Newsvine, on Mike Industries, and on thousands of blogs across the world, we launched ElectionVine. ElectionVine is a giant distributed polling system designed to gauge the momentum of the U.S. Presidential race through the eyes of the independent internet and blogosphere. While traditional polling methods are carried out by single organizations, ElectionVine is entirely in the hands of site owners like you. Here’s how it works: Head to electionvine.com and get your… - Read Full Entry…