Not Every Adventure is a Success

I have an obsessive attraction to Japanese food. Lately my favourite dish is broiled or grilled miso eggplant, so when I came home today with a purple eggplant under my arm, I knew just what I wanted to do with it.

What is miso? Miso is basically a paste made from fermented soybeans. A few weeks ago I bought a package of miso soup mix which included 8 packages of miso paste and 8 packages of tofu cubes, seaweed, and green onion. I didn't like the miso soup but thought maybe I could salvage it and use the paste with this eggplant. I took a real risk with this because I couldn't find any recipes that didn't involve making the paste on your own. I looked at a few recipes to see the process that was used.

I started by slicing the eggplant in rounds about half an inch thick. I read in one recipe that Japanese eggplant has a thinner skin, and if you choose to use American eggplant it is best to score the outside. I then soaked the eggplant rounds in water. 

Eggplant floats so I had to improvise a bit!

In the meantime I squeezed out 5 little packages of miso paste. It is quite bitter and the dish should be sweet so I added a teaspoon of sugar and about half a teaspoon of ginger powder (I like to use ingredients that I have on hand).

After soaking the eggplant for 10 minutes, I then patted the rounds dry and arranged them on an oiled baking sheet and brushed them with a bit of oil. With the oven tray at the top rack, I broiled the eggplant for about 8 minutes until the rounds became slightly browned. I took them out and spread my doctored miso paste on the top of the rounds. I placed them back in the oven for another 8 minutes until they became soft. The smell was delicious and they looked amazing!

Unfortunately the taste was not so amazing... I had only used half the eggplant rounds so instead of giving up I decided to sprinkle the rest of the rounds with soy sauce and honey and baked them at 350F for about 10 minutes.

From here I have 2 options. I can try to make miso eggplant from scratch another time, or leave it to my favourite Japanese restaurants to prepare perfectly. At this point I haven't decided which I will opt for.

Adventures involve taking risks, trying new things, and hoping for a positive outcome. As the title of this week's Adventure in Domestication states, "not every adventure is a success." To be an adventurer you accept the possibility that not everything will work out perfectly, because if everything worked out all the time, it wouldn't be an adventure at all!