Miso Sauce for Glazing

This is a simpler version of a sauce from my sushi bar that was known as Venus sauce. Its origins lie in an old traditional Japanese fair dish known as “dengaku”, where it was painted onto tofu and vegetables and grilled over coals. Use this in a similar fashion, but use the broiler as it is less messy. Try it on marinated firm tofu, blanched vegetables, and fish.

INGREDIENTS:

2½-3 tablespoons shiro (white) miso

2 cups mayonnaise

½ tablespoon ginger juice-grate and squeeze fresh ginger*

¼ cup orange juice, or as needed

1 teaspoon each sake and mirin (if you have it, otherwise don’t bother)

Agave syrup or sugar to taste, if needed (you probably won’t need it if you have sake and mirin. If you have only sake, use a little agave or sugar to balance)

A few drops of good quality soy sauce-try to find an artisanal soy sauce at a Japanese grocery, or use “light” soy sauce- do not exceed ½ teaspoon

METHOD:

In a large-ish non-reactive bowl, mix the miso, half the ginger juice, half the orange juice, and sake and mirin. Whisk like mad to thin and combine the ingredients.

Add in the mayonnaise, and whisk vigorously to thoroughly amalgamate the ingredients.

Now the fun, mad alchemist bit, happens. Add a few drops of the soy sauce and whisk in. Taste. Add more of the orange juice until you can taste it without overwhelming the rest of the flavors. Add ginger juice until you taste it without feeling it as a burn on the tongue. It should provide a refreshing clean flavor, but not heat up the sauce. The sauce should be about the consistency of Heinz ketchup-just pourable, but stiff enough not to run. To achieve this consistency, you may need to thin with a little water, or you can just add more of the orange juice, along with sake and mirin to thin it out. If you use water, you may need to add more of these to bring the flavor up. Adding more ginger requires a light hand as the ginger flavor will intensify and get hotter when cooked.

Taste the sauce. No one ingredient should stand out, so adjust as necessary. Usually at this point, a dab of miso, mayo, or orange juice is what is called for to correct the flavors. To “test drive” the sauce, you could put a little on foil and pop it in the toaster oven or oven on broil or top-brown and cook until bubbling a bit and golden and lightly blistered. Taste and adjust as you need. Once you have done this sauce a couple times you won’t need to measure anything. Miso’s can vary brand to brand, and even batch to batch within the same brand, so always taste a little before starting.

Transfer sauce to a small container, ideally a squeeze bottle for ease of dispensing.

Keeps a couple weeks in refrigerator.

Chef’s Notes: *In a pinch, you can take the juice from a jar of pickled ginger for sushi and use some of that. Use the sushi ginger, not the red stuff used for other things as that is too salty. The sushi ginger liquid is not as sharp as straight ginger and is sweeter along with the vinegar, so adjust as needed. Use this with chopped seafood such as clams, oysters, shrimp and fish bits, and add some asparagus or chopped scallion of you wish, and mix in a bowl with the sauce. Add spoonfuls into oven-proof scallop shells, or make little trays of sturdy foil around the same volume as the shells, and broil 3½ to 4 inches from the elements/jets. Use on blanched roots or grilled eggplant or summer squash.

Yield: Around 2 cups

Source: Chef Andrew E Cohen