Eggplant Unagi - Vegan

As per the  Wikipedia,  Unagi don is a dish from Japan. It consists of large bowl filled with steamed white rice and topped with fillets of eel grilled in a Japanese style Kabayaki , very similar to Teriyaki. Those fillets are glazed with sweet soy sauce and caramelized over charcoal fire. But with this Vegan version Eggplant is perfect to give fish kind of texture and look. You can use tofu also but I just love any kind of Eggplants so I go with Eggplant. You can make the sauce and cooked both side of 

eggplant , applying sauce on both sides and its done. 

You can long purple eggplant for this and make sure when you flip you don't break the skin , since presentation is also very important. You can roast or bake the eggplant too. But I like stove top method best. 

Ingredients : 

2 Long Chinese or Japanese purple eggplant

Sesame Seeds

Cooked rice

Oil

Sauce 

3 tbsp. Mirin

1/3 cup of hot water

2 tbsp. light soy sauce

1 tbsp. maple syrup

1/2 tsp. sugar

Method :

In a bowl, add mirin, hot water, light soy sauce , maple syrup and mix it. and keep it aside.

Trim off the eggplant top , then cut into 4 or 5 inch sections, Steam over high heat until tender about 8 to 10 minutes. 

Once the eggplant is cooked and cooled down, use a sharp knife to cut it open like a book but careful not to cut thru skin. 

Then make another slit on the right and then left. Now score the flesh to create a holder for the sauce.

Heat a non stick pan with oil over medium heat.

Put the cut side down and pan fry till its golden brown 

Apply the sauce one tbsp. at a time

Then flit again so now flesh is at the bottom  of the pan and taking all the sauce while you are applying sauce on the skin. 

To serve you can roast some scallions or bok choi or spinach or any greens in little oil and salt or you can skip that too and just eat the rice and eggplant

To assemble, put cooked rice in a bowl , top it with eggplant and drizzle with extra sauce and garnished with sesame seeds and enjoy. I had some fried rice leftovers so I used that one.