Miso Sauce with Green Perilla 大葉味噌

This is a variation of flavored. miso dipping/sauce. Miso can be flavored with kinome 木の芽 (young leaves of the Japanese pepper tree),  Yuzu (Japanese orange), other Japanese citrus or perilla (shiso or ooba in Japanese). Since our herb garden is mass producing Japanese green perilla “Ooba 大葉”, I made “Ooba-miso 大葉味噌”. This is a versatile condiment. We first tried it with cucumber sticks (picture #1). For that iteration, I used regular miso and the condiment came out a bit salty. I adjusted the saltiness by adding some Japanese broth and sugar especially since after cooling the sauce was a bit too stiff. This worked out well after the adjustments. The perilla really added nice flavor. I have also made a dipping sauce for fresh cucumbers using sweet “Saikyo miso 西京味噌” . I suspect if I used that instead of the regular miso in the perilla sauce the sauce would have come out less salty. Maybe I’ll try that next time.

There appears to be some variations in the recipe. I looked at several and came up with the simplest.

Ingredients:
40 leaves of Japanese perilla leaves, finely chopped
6 tbs miso
4 tbs mirin
4 tbs sake
1 tbs dark roasted sesame oil
4 tbs ground white sesame (I re-roasted the white sesame seeds and coarsely ground them in a Japanese Suribachi)

2-3 tbs Japanese dashi broth (optional)
1-2 tsp sugar (optional)

Directions: 
Add the miso and sesame oil to a small frying pan and mix well. Add the mirin, and sake. Cook on low heat stirring constantly for several minutes until slightly thickened. Taste and if needed add the sugar. Add the perilla and stir. Add the sesame seeds. Adjust the thickness by adding dashi broth or water.  It became thicker when refrigerated. The miso mixture can be stored in a clean glass jar (picture #2). It should last several weeks in the refrigerator.