Japanese vegan recipe: Eggplant with Sesame Soy Sauce

This vegan eggplant dish, flavored with soy sauce, mirin and a touch of brown sugar, is a very popular home cooking dish in Japan. When chef and cookbook author Atsuko Ikeda makes it, she steams the eggplants whole to retain their moisture and flavor.

The recipe, featured in her new cookbook, “Otsumami: Japanese Small Bites & Appetizers: Over 70 Recipes to Enjoy with Drinks” (Ryland Peters & Small, $28), calls for grinding sesame seeds to a paste to bind the sauce. A food processor gets the job done just fine. Serve it with your favorite vegetarian sushi rolls.

Eggplant with Sesame Soy Sauce

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

2 eggplants

1 ounce toasted white sesame seeds

2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons mirin

1 teaspoon light brown soft sugar

1 teaspoon chile oil

1 teaspoon peeled and finely grated fresh ginger

Pinch of fresh chives, finely chopped

DIRECTIONS

Peel the skins off the eggplants but leave the stalks on for now (they can be removed easily when cooked).

Bring enough water — enough to cover the eggplants by about a third — to a boil in a large saucepan. Place the whole eggplants in the pan, cover with a lid and let them steam for 15 minutes, turning once halfway through.

Meanwhile, to make the sesame soy sauce, grind the toasted white sesame seeds to a grainy paste in a food processor, spice grinder or traditional Japanese tool called a suribachi. Put the ground sesame seeds in a bowl with the toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, mirin and brown sugar. Stir together and set aside.