Japanse braised Kakuni aubergine is soft with a savory and spicy flavour. I had this dish in a Japanese restaurant which I cannot forget, and they call it ‘eggplant nanban’. But after searching online for the recipe I got many different results that didn’t match what I ate at the restaurant.
I got so confused with the Japanese sauce or type of cooking methods like nanban, agebitashi and kakuni. After some research on these different cooking styles, here a brief summary on what each means.
Nanban means deep-fried and common accompanied with tartare sauce. Ingredient is usually deep-fried chicken in batter. Agebitashi means deep-fry and soaked in sauce or broth. Kakuni means stewed cube. Ingredient is usually pork belly cut into large cubes.
After some home cooking attempts and the flavours I remembered (well… I went back to the restaurant a few times), the closest style is Kakuni pork belly but then with aubergine. You can eat it cold or warm as appetiser. If you serve the aubergine cold, the flavours are denser and superlicious. For example, you can eat it with rice or as topping in your soup noodles.
Cooking time: approx. 30-45min and serves 5-6 persons
Ingredients & Tools
- 6x Chinese aubergine
- 6x Tbsp cooking sake
- 6x Tbsp mirin
- 3x Tbsp grated ginger
- 4.5 Tbsp soy sauce
- 150cl water
- Optional: 2-3x thin sliced medium-hot chili
- Garnish: sesame seeds and/or thin sliced spring onion
- Olive oil
- Grater
- Frying pan 24-28cm diameter, not too big because you want to braise the aubergine in the sauce
- Cut baking paper to use it as lid on the pan
- Small medium bowl
- Big bowl
What to do?
- ————- Aubergine ————-
- Peel the skin in ‘zebra stripes’ down the aubergine.
- Cut aubergine into 2-3cm cubes
- Soak the cubes in big bowl for 5min in cold or hand warm water. This is to decrease the bitterness of the aubergine.
- ———– Kakuni Sauce ———–
- Mix in bowl: 6x Tbsp sake, 6x Tbsp mirin, 4.5 Tbsp soy sauce, 150cl water, 3x Tbsp grated ginger and optional 3x thin sliced chilli
- ——— Cooking Process ———
- Cut the baking paper round, 3-4cm bigger than the pan size and cut a small whole in the middle.
- Heat the pan with a splash of olive oil.
- Put the cubes in the pan on low/medium heat.
- Pan fry the cubes, turnaround and sprinkle extra olive oil if needed
- Once your aubergine gets a bit soft, pour the sauce in the pan.
- Let it braise for 20min on low heat and cover the pan with the baking paper lid
- Turnaround the cubes from time to time during the cooking process.
- When the cubes are soft, near to mushy, it’s time to serve.
- Garnish with some sesame seeds and/or with thin sliced spring onion.
I hope you like this homemade Kakuni style aubergine, itadakimasu 😊
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