miso

Perhaps it was an influential trip to farm camp as a youngster, or maybe it was out of sheer stubbornness, but I've only come around to eating red meat in the past few years.

It's easy to understand a deep-seated fear of cruciferous vegetables (I still can't stomach broccoli), gloppy (or velvety, depending on your perspective) mayonnaise, or pungent hard-boiled eggs, but steak-phobia is a tougher sell.

Even the most ardent carnivores will respect one's choice to eschew animal flesh, but I'm still perplexed by my avoidance of red meat (and red meat only). Thankfully I've since learned the err of my ways and have taken to juicy steaks, tender braised short ribs, and silky carpaccio with alarming intensity.

Keep reading for the mouth-watering recipe.

Salty, and slightly sweet and full of umami, miso is undoubtedly my desert island ingredient. Add to the mix verdant Spring asparagus, sherry vinegar, copious amounts of butter, and poached eggs, and it's hardly surprising that this weeknight-friendly dish has become an obsession of sorts around my household. Rarely a week passes where this perfect confluence of ingredients does not grace my table. Sometimes I even dig into a bowl of it more than once!

To get my miso butter and poached egg fix outside of asparagus season, I've even taken to swapping out steamed kale for the grassy stalk to inspiring effect. I'm an obsessive sort, prone to extreme loyalty to any matter of things, but I've rarely been so smitten with a single dish as in this case. So, let me urge you strongly to try it out for yourself — I'd bet that you'll become a convert as well.

Miso and I are having a bit of a moment. Essentially any weeknight I'm dining solo, my plate is filled with steamed kale tossed with miso butter and topped with a poached egg or two. My snack of choice? Miso kale chips with tingly shichimi togarashi. Miso carrot soup: check! Miso-glazed salmon (take a wild guess). And this — tangy miso mustard sauce made luscious with a hefty dose of butter — is sure to enter the rotation. For starters, I'll be slicking steaks with a light coating, drizzling it on pork chops, and tossing it with snappy, steamed vegetables, and (shamelessly) eating it with a spoon . . .

Keep reading for the versatile sauce recipe.

I'm about to out myself in a big way: until relatively recently, I found cooked kale's cruciferous twang a bit off-putting, unpalatable even. Despite the overarching food-world wisdom praising its greatness (what other vegetable has a news-worthy slogan?), somehow, I just couldn't get into the leafy green. That is, until kale met miso.

Both kale and miso bring potent flavors to the table, yet when paired together, something magical happens, and I can't help but snap up these crispy snacks with near maniacal intensity. And while kale and miso on their own are quite the treat, I like to gild the lily with a generous dusting of tingly and fragrant shichimi togarashi. This spice blend is technically optional, and could be replaced with red chili flakes or the like in a pinch, for such a minor investment (I found mine in the Asian section of my local supermarket for less than $2, it's also available online) it provides a big payoff.

For those curious: shichimi means "seven spice," and is generally composed of a blend of ground chili pepper, Sichuan pepper, orange peel, black-and-white sesame seeds, nori, ginger, and hemp seed, all of which meld together into a super-spice far greater than the sum of their parts.

Keep reading for the recipe.