This recipe is my homage to both an Italian ragout and stewed lamb. I love stewing lamb with lots of chilies and tomatoes, just because it is such has enough gamey-ness to hold up to a lot of flavors. Lamb curries are some of my favorite curries for that reason, but even stewed lamb chops with Chinese black bean paste is something we grew up eating, since it was one of my dad’s favorite things to make for us. For this specific dish, I wanted to do a callback to an old Thanksgiving dish I made, which was a spicy lamb ragout, but that version had rice dumplings. This version is more vegetable-centered, featuring roasted eggplant, which adds a nice, meaty texture to compliment the lamb. This is one of those dishes that is 100% a side dish, meant to be served with something else, since it was envisioned to be a dish to be served at a holiday dinner – we had it for Thanksgiving in 2023, and it was one of those dishes that could convince an eggplant hater into eating eggplant. It is good with rice, great with noodles(my personal preference), and in a sandwich(if you feel as daring as to do so). The dish itself highlights meaty textures and strong umami, since the ingredients were really designed to carry that specific profile of savory-forward with pleasant spicing.

While it is admittedly a side dish, this ragout is still complex! I used a combination of szechuan chilies and chili flakes, coupled with ground cumin, to give the lamb a more fragrant and spiced flavor profile. We have your usual aromatics in there too in onions and garlic, sweated out, then pureed with charred tomatoes, and all of that is layered in together to give the lamb a lovely flavor, similar to a Bolognese, with casual Taiwanese influences. The eggplant, on the other hand, is more inspired by the misoyaki treatment you might find on fish, but in this case, with Japanese eggplant. I used Japanese eggplant because it is thinner, so I could get a faster marinade on it. That and my cutting board at home that I normally use is really small, so I was too lazy to chop up a giant Italian one for this. The eggplant is marinated with miso, specifically white miso which is sweeter and pleasant, mirin, cooking sake, and a little sugar for that caramelization. That marinade not only brines the eggplant, but gives it a gorgeous brown finish when it is seared! All in all, you have this unctuous, melt-in-the-mouth eggplant with a robust ragout. I would happily eat this with a carb of my choosing almost every week if I could!

Makes 4 servings:
For the lamb ragout:
1/4 pound lamb leg, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 tsp ground szechuan peppercorns
1/4 tsp ground cumin
a pinch of salt
oil
3 Roma tomatoes
1 onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tbsp dried chili flakes
2 cups beef stock

Toss the lamb with the ground peppercorns, cumin, and salt. Sear the lamb in a lightly oiled pan until golden brown on each side. Remove the lamb pieces from heat. Halve the tomatoes and onions. Sear the tomatoes and onions in that same pan until the tomatoes are blackened on one side, and the onions are wilted. Transfer the onions and tomatoes to a blender and add to that blender the sugar. Then in that same pan, saute off the garlic with the chili flakes until the garlic is lightly browned. Transfer the garlic and chili flakes into the blender with the tomatoes and onions, and puree those ingredients with the beef stock. Pass the liquid through a sieve into a deep enough oven-proof pot to contain all of the liquid and lamb. Return the lamb to the pot and cook everything on low heat, with the pot covered, for 30 minutes. Then bake the pot at 325 degrees F for another hour. Shred the lamb with two forks.

For the marinated eggplant:
2 Japanese eggplant
2 tbsp white miso paste
2 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp cooking sake
1 tsp granulated sugar
Oil

Halve the eggplant lengthwise and score the flesh side. Mix the other ingredients to form your marinade and submerge the eggplant in that, flesh side down, for 30 minutes. Sear the eggplants in a lightly oiled pan for 3 minutes on each side.

To plate:
Start with the ragout on the bottom, and garnish the top with the eggplant to finish.