Tuna and egg plant with mizore dressing 鮪とナスのみぞれ和え

This is another installment in my continuing quest to find a way to enjoy low-quality frozen blocks of yellowfin tuna.  This is based on a recipe I saw on the web. But for a few reasons, this dish turned out to be not as good as it could have been. It is combination of cubes of tuna sashimi, steamed (microwaved) egg plant dressed in grated daikon.



Since we had just harvested fresh myoga, I use it for garnish.



Since I could not get a Japanese eggplant, I used a small Italian eggplant. As per the recipe, I wrapped it in plastic wrap and placed it in a silicon microwave container and microwaved it for a few minutes then let it cool with the wrap still on. After it reached room temperature, I cooled it further in the refrigerator. I cut both the eggplant and tuna into similar sized block pieces. I gave it my usual "yubiki" treatment and then coated with sashimi soy sauce (below).



I grated the daikon and drained out the liquid using a fine mesh strainer. I added a small amount of rice vinegar and soy sauce and mixed the tuna and eggplant with the grated daikon.

We had two problems with this particular dish and they both had to do with the quality of the ingredients we used (not the tuna this time). One was that the grated daikon was ridiculously and atomically hot! This is a bit unusual but daikon is from the horseradish family and some, like this one, exhibit their heritage to greater or lesser degrees. We actually had to remove the daikon in order to be able to eat the rest of the dish. Another problem was the quality of the egg plant. It had good amount of seeds, which I mostly removed, but it did not have the wonderful texture and taste of a Japanese eggplant. I would like to try this dish again using a milder daikon and better quality egg plant.