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Fukashi Nasu
Fukashi nasu — steamed eggplant chilled and served with mustard soy sauce
A Niigata dish of kinchaku eggplant halved, steamed, chilled and eaten with mustard or ginger soy sauce. In a prefecture among Japan's top eggplant producers, it is said to have been valued as a cooling dish through the summer.
- Origin: Niigata
- About 260 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
Round, dense-fleshed eggplant is steamed slowly, chilled thoroughly, and eaten with a mustard-soy or ginger-soy dip. Eggplant tends to turn bitter when simmered or grilled, but steaming it brings out a silky, almost melting texture and lets its natural sweetness shine through. Torn apart by hand, the fibrous texture comes through, and the sharp bite of mustard sharpens the whole dish.
How it's made
Eggplant halves are soaked in water to draw out bitterness. They're steamed for about ten minutes until a chopstick slides through easily, then removed and left to cool. Once chilled thoroughly in the refrigerator, they're cut into easy-to-eat pieces and served with mustard-soy or ginger-soy sauce. It's also good eaten warm rather than chilled.
Why it took this shape
In this region, where eggplant grows in abundance from summer into autumn, it has long been valued for its supposed cooling effect on the body, used as a way to endure the summer heat. Round varieties with dense flesh are said to suit steaming particularly well, and the dish appears on the table during the Obon season as one of the offerings made in memory of ancestors, remaining a beloved taste of summer.
Before You Go
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Foods to look for in summerA guide to foods often seen in Japan around summer — eel on the Day of the Ox, hiyashi chuka, somen, shaved ice, edamame with beer, and hamo — with rough pointers for finding them.
- Food for Obon and the harvest moon (tsukimi)A guide to the meat-free shojin ryori and somen served at Obon, and the tsukimi dango offered on the night of the harvest moon.
Dishes in the same style
- Agonoko UmaniThe roe of egg-bearing flying fish, caught only in early summer, is simmered in stock and soy sauce as an Oki bar snack. Its large grains and dense, sticky texture are prized as a delicacy said to be scarcer even than the fish's flesh.
- Funa MisoCrucian carp is simmered slowly with soybeans for around five hours, then finished in a sauce of red miso and coarse sugar. A freshwater fish dish of the Kiso rivers' lower basin, made with fatty winter carp simmered until the bones soften through.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Niigata
- AnboA Chuetsu-region dish of steamed rice-flour dumplings filled with sweet bean paste, pickled greens or eggplant. Similar in spirit to Nagano's oyaki but distinguished by its rice-flour skin, reflecting land suited to rice rather than wheat.
- Echigo misoA red, savory miso from Niigata, also called 'ukikoji miso' (floating-koji miso) because its polished whole-grain rice koji appears to float within the paste. Its style is said to vary across Niigata's Joetsu, Chuetsu, Kaetsu, and Sado districts, each shaped by local climate.
- Fugu no Ko no KasuzukeA rare Sado delicacy in which puffer fish ovaries are salt-cured for two years or more, then aged for a long stretch in Sado's sake lees. Only ovaries processed by licensed fugu chefs are sold, and the practice is said to date back to the Edo period.
- Hegi SobaA soba from Ojiya, Niigata, that uses funori seaweed, the same binder once used to size thread for the region's textiles, as a noodle binder. It is arranged in small bite-sized portions on a wooden box called a hegi.
- Hiyashijiru Miso JitateA chilled soup from the Chuetsu region, dashi thinned with miso and studded with chopped cucumber and shiso. Devised to stay appetizing through the summer heat, it is said to be eaten on its own or poured over rice or noodles.
- IgoneriA Sado specialty made by simmering and kneading igo seaweed until it sets into a firm sheet, then slicing it thin to eat with ginger soy sauce or vinegar miso. Chewy with a faint sea-breeze aroma, it is said to trace back to Kyushu cuisine carried north by kitamae-bune ships.