Miso-Glazed Eggplant (なす田楽, Nasu Dengaku)

Nasu is a summer vegetable with a short temper. Buy it taut-skinned and heavy, then cook it the day you bring it home, while the flesh is still pale and sweet. In shun, eggplant needs very little persuasion: oil, heat, and a miso glaze that knows when to stop.

The mistake is brushing the miso on too soon. Sweet miso burns before eggplant becomes tender, and then you have a handsome top and a stubborn middle, which is cooking as costume. We cook the eggplant first until the cut face collapses under a spoon, then glaze and blister it at the end. Tender first, glaze last. That is the whole secret.

Dengaku sits nicely beside rice and clear soup, rich enough to feel generous but small enough to behave as a side dish. Aka-miso gives the sauce its dark, salty backbone; mirin, sake, sugar, and a spoonful of dashi round it without burying the eggplant under sweetness. Leave the plate open, scatter sesame while the glaze is tacky, and let the vegetable speak through the shine. Nothing hidden.