Miso marinated cream cheese クリームチーズの味噌ずけ

Marinading cheese or tofu in miso appears to be a very common way of making snacks in Japan that  go well with drinks. I have posted similar dishes (tofu and Mozzarella cheese marinated in miso). I saw miso-marinated Philadelphia cream cheese somewhere and made this dish one day.

I used a block of regular Philadelphia cream cheese cut into square.

Miso marinade is essentially a mixture of miso and mirin but this time I also added some sugar (1tbs miso, 1/2 tbs mirin and 1/2 tbs sugar. I adjusted the mirin to make a spreadable but not runny consistency (below).

I layered the cream cheese adding thin layers of the miso mixture and another layer of the cream cheese and so on. I covered the top with plastic wrap and then closed the lid to let it marinate in the refrigerator.

We tried this after it had been marinating for one day, one week and 10 days. It got better the longer it marinated. The 10 day one was the best. It can marinate longer as far as we can tell. This is a very rich dish; a little goes a long way but it is good with either sake or wine (especially red wine).